Untitled from The New Realists (Les Nouveaux réalistes)

Jacques Villeglé was a French artist who pioneered the practice of tearing and collaging found posters and street advertising from urban surfaces, a method he termed affichisme or poster art. Beginning in the 1950s, he collected damaged layers of printed paper from Paris walls, preserving them as-is without alteration or addition, treating the street itself as his studio. His work transforms the accumulated visual debris of urban life into formal compositions that document the texture and temporality of the postwar city. Villeglé was a founding member of the Nouveaux Réalistes movement, which embraced found materials and everyday objects as legitimate artistic subjects.