Pierre Molinier
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Pierre Molinier (April 13, 1900 - March 3, 1976) was a painter, photographer and "maker of objects". He was born in Agen (France) and lived his life in Bordeaux (France). He began his career by painting landscapes, but his work turned towards a fetishistic eroticism early on.
Molinier began to take photographs at the age of 18, and started his erotic production around 1950. With the aid of a wide range of specially made 'props' – dolls, various prosthetic limbs, stiletto heels, dildos and an occasional confidante – Pierre Molinier focused upon his own body as the armature for a constructive form that ultimately produced a large body of photographic work. Most of his photographs, photomontages, are self-portraits of himself as a woman.
He began a correspondence with André Breton and sent him photographs of his paintings. Later Breton integrated him into the Surrealist group. Breton organized an exhibition of Molinier's paintings in Paris, in January-February 1956.
Pierre Molinier's enigmatic photographs influenced European and North American body artists in the early 1970s and continue to engage artists, critics, and collectors today.
Pierre Molinier committed suicide at 76 years of age.
Bibliography :
MOLINIER, Pierre - Le chaman et ses créatures, Bordeaux : William Blake & Co., 1995, 96 p. [Preface by Pierre Molinier, introduction by Roland Villeneuve, photomontages, drawings and reproductions of paintings]
PETIT, Pierre - Molinier, une vie d'enfer, Paris : Editions Ramsay/Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1992, 267 p., 86 ill. [Biography in French] and Kyoto : Jimbun Shoin, 2000, 300 p., 86 ill. [Translation in Japanese]
