EXHIBITION IN PROGRESS

Albert Voisin aka Vanber

The City of Crest collection

15 december 2021 – 27 february 2022

In the 1930s, he met the artists Albert Gleizes, Jacques Villon, André Lhote, Sonia and Robert Delaunay. These meetings will be decisive for the development of his artistic writing. He participates in many in fashion fairs and exhibitions: Salon des Indépendants, Salon d’Automne, Salon des Surindépendants, Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. He teaches in the City of Paris art schools.

In 1948, he discovered the village of Toulaud in Ardèche, with his wife, the painter Madeleine Théry. He discovers the Drôme through The Small Routes for the Artist, a work by André Lhote, based in Mirmande, which invites artists to appreciate the relief and light of the Drôme.

In 1956, he bought his house in Crest, at the foot of the Tower, and settled there permanently.

Vanber is strongly influenced by the cubist movement and the abstractionism, while maintaining a relationship to figuration and the work of matter. He was certainly one of the first to take off posters for artistic purposes – his first collages were exhibited at the Suzanne Michel gallery in Paris in 1951. Vanber is also an outdoor painter who works from the landscapes of Crest and its surroundings. He is also marked by the experiences of Moly-Sabata, place of artistic creation in Sablons, on the banks of the Rhône.

At the turn of the 1960s, he participated in the animation of artistic life in Crest, through the Art et jeunesse fair and the Drôme Valley Festival, an initiative still rare in the provinces in a very centralized artistic France.

It will be exhibited at the Valence museum in 1985, then on numerous occasions in the region, notably in Crest and Valence in the 1990s and 2000s. Works by Vanber are kept at the museums of Montmartre, Valence, Cherbourg and Condé-en-Normandie.

His works are signed but are not dated. They rarely have a title. When they have an original frame, it is white and made of recovered wood. These habits of Vanber invite us to consider his work globally, without hierarchy of technique or strongly determined chronology. He simultaneously practices painting on reality and abstract composition, and regularly returns with repaints on old works.

An exhibition produced by the City of Crest. The works exhibited belong exclusively to the “Donation Vanber”, property of the City of Crest. With friendly advice from the Vanber Association.

Discover our Vanber exhibition in video

IN COMING EXHIBITIONS

• The Triumph of color
  

April – June 2022

A look at the invention and evolutions of color photography, from the collections of the Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (MAP)

• Jacques Clerc – Sculptor, engraver, publisher
  

July – October 2022

Retrospective of this major figure in the art of the second half of the twentieth century in the Drôme, scanning all the artistic techniques approached by the artist during his rich career

 # Visit-meeting

Sunday, January 16 at 4 p.m.

The Art Center invites you to learn more about Albert Voisin aka Vanber alongside Martial Duvert, gallery owner, and Mireille Veauvy, artist. Both are members of the Vanber association working to promote the artist’s work.

All audiences, free access with the entrance ticket to the Art Center

# Guided tours for groups and schools

Information and reservation on 04 75 76 61 38 or culture@mairie-crest.fr

School visits are offered free of charge by the City of Crest

Designed by Ville de Crest – Credit for homepage imagery : atelier d’architecture florent rougemont