The works displayed are mainly on paper and illustrate the great variety of techniques and processes used: collage, arrangements and assemblages of drawings, photos, press articles, quotations or borrowings from other artists …

They are hinged inventively on three themes: jazz, Balzac and the artist’s own home. 

Pierre Buraglio is a jazz lover. Many of the creations throughout his work refer to it through titles, rhythm or the actual idea of variation. Large collages entitled "Now’s The Time" and made for the Vienna Jazz Festival in 2021 mingle quotations, photos, press cuttings, references to jazz musicians, to sound and to other painters. The series provides a vision of this music that is both encyclopaedic and personal—a plastic transcription of its swing in which words have all their importance.
A ravishing museum in the west of Paris, La Maison de Balzac is holding the exhibition “Buraglio à l'épreuve de Balzac” to be held from 14 April. For the occasion, Galerie Catherine Putman has published a set of digital prints made using drawings and collages by the artist. For this series of 11 plates that use the titles of 10 novels by Balzac, Pierre Buraglio lays out the covers of the novels with juxtapositions of his own drawings, photocopies and text. He tests himself by using his own images to confront Balzac (“à l’épreuve de Balzac”).

We finally see where he has always been—his house, his courtyard, Maisons-Alfort and the Charentonneau area in an anthology of watercolours and unpublished monotypes. Long walks in the town and the view of his studio are always present. Variations on a theme—and jazz is not far off. 

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Buraglio à l’épreuve de Balzac
Exhibition from 14 April to 4 September 2022
Maison de Balzac
47 rue Raynouard
75016 Paris
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Pierre Buraglio was born in Charenton (France) in 1939.
He lives and works in Maisons-Alfort, in the Val-de-Marne region.
In 1959, he attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) in Paris. In 1961, he made his debut at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture and worked in Roger Chastel’s studio at the ENSBA. During the events of May ‘68, Pierre Buraglio was a committed member of in the Atelier Populaire (‘Popular studio’) in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1969 and 1974, he stopped painting and devoted himself to militant political activities. In 1976, he began to teach at the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts de Valence, and was subsequently appointed as a teacher at the ENSBA (Paris).