Biographical Data
Born in 1934 in Lyon, France. He lives and works in Valuandry, in Maine-et-Loire. Jean-Michel Sanejouand studies Law in Lyon and, later, Political Sciences in Paris (1951-1954). He receives no artistic education but begins painting at the end of the fifties. His first individual exhibition takes place in 1967.
Brief Chronology
In 1962, Jean-Michel Sanejouand quits abstract painting to work on shapes and materials. He is two decades ahead of his time. From 1963 o 1967 he creates Alignements de pierres, he covers frames with canvas cloth, with plastic or linoleum. He proposes to perform a Charges-objets: “to relate familiar objects” once they have been taken out of their context and liberated of their “use value”. In 1967 he begins making interventions in public spaces and exhibitions with his Organisations d’espace. He installs metallic tubes in the courtyard of l’École polytechnique, plastic girders in the Lund museum, he designs a Schéma d’aménagement de la Vallée de la Basse Seine (development plan), from Le Havre to Paris (1969-1972). At the same time, he uses paintbrushes, felt tip pens and Indian ink to create “most of the times, grotesque and aggressive characters” (Calligraphies d’humeur). In 1978, he returns to painting with the series Espaces-peintures, large landscapes, that come very close to abstraction, to which he adds figures or trees. In 1986, little remains on his canvases: on the white cloth we only find outlines of faces and traces in black (series: Suite, Accord, Ensemble et Élément). In the 90’s he begins creating sculptures with black-painted stones, which are like monument models (Mentor, 1993). These sculptures are later cast in bronze. He also works on pictures he sticks on canvases and “paintings-sculptures”: painted representations of his sculpted works.
P.L.T.
Ensemble, 1988, Acrylic on canvas, 195 x 130 cm / 76,7 x 51,1 in.