Jacques Toussaint

Born in Paris in 1947, Jacques Toussaint began his artistic activity in Italy in 1971 after studying at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. After his first exhibitions in France and Italy, at the same time he begins to take an interest in furniture design and for several years he will be a consultant for some important furniture companies, such as Bernini, Interflex and Matteo Grassi; for the latter he develops a line of products and acts as art director. At the end of 1985 he created the Atelier brand as a synthesis of his previous experiences, with the aim of producing projects entrusted to emerging designers, such as Hans-Peter Weidmann, Wolfgang Laubersheimer, Hannes Wettstein, or more established ones such as Toshiyuki Kita, Ross Littell and Verner Panton . With Atelier he also dedicates himself to the re-edition of projects signed by masters of international level such as Alvar Aalto, Alfred Roth, Werner Max Moser, Hans Georg Bellmann and Giuseppe Terragni. Starting from 1993 he collaborated on the definition of a new collection of objects in recycled paper for the Arbos di Solagna. In 1997 he created Glass Works, a collection of mirrors born from research on glass, and in 1998 Connections, a collection of artistic objects that intends to highlight the existing connections between people and things that have influenced his work. Starting from 2000 Toussaint began to develop a series of in situ installations of particular importance and in constant evolution in relation to the spaces, which, in addition to providing a form of estrangement in the viewer, conciliate meditation. This trend finds its beginning in the exhibition Between dream and reality organized by the Arsenal Gallery in the space of Palazzo Branicki in Bialystok (PL), followed by interventions at the Cocchi Foundation in the Water Towers of Budrio and again in the deconsecrated church of San Francesco in Pordenone with the exhibition In Itinere, to arrive at the ambitious project… Que du bleu! curated by Luigi Cavadini, created in the large spaces of the Palazzo delle Stelline gallery at the Institut Français in Milan. The French artist has been invited several times to present his works at the Casabianca Museum in Malo (Vicenza), an institution that illustrates through graphic works and not only the various stages of international contemporary art from 1960 to the present day. After having carried out a series of artistic interventions in religious buildings with ancient history, in 2019 he directed his attention to the intrinsic qualities of modern architecture, choosing the church of Santa Maria Assunta di Riola di Vergato, the result of a long design by the architect Finnish Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), for an installation composed of videos and lights, presented in 2020 which will be followed by a new artistic intervention in January next year. The long work of analysis and review of 50 years of activity that preceded the publication of the monograph Jacques Toussaint. Arte 1967/2017, has also further renewed his way of doing research, which he finds in this exhibition in La Spezia, in the work Galassia CAMeC / JT-840 x 675 h 500 SP, an original documentation. His works are present in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum (USA), the Die Neue Sammlung in Munich (D), the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin (D), the National Museum of Poznan (PL) and the Gallery of Modern Art. of Palazzo Forti in Verona.