Jérome Mesnager & Nice Art

JEROME MESNAGER

Jérôme Mesnager entered the Boulle school in 1974 where he trained as a cabinetmaker and where he later taught. In 1979, he took comic strip lessons from Yves Got and Georges Pichard, professors at the Duperré School of Applied Arts.

He is one of the founders, in 1982, of Zig-Zag, a group of about ten very young artists who decide to occupy the street by drawing graffiti and, also, to occupy briefly, the time of an artistic performance, abandoned factories.

On January 16, 1983, he invented the Man in White, “a symbol of light, strength and peace”. This white silhouette Jérôme Mesnager has reproduced throughout the world, from the walls of Paris to the Chinese wall.

In 1990, Jérôme Mesnager left his childhood home, the place where he met Jean-Pierre Le Boul'ch, the headquarters of his associations, the studio of his first works, to move to the 20th arrondissement of Paris. He will exhibit a series of palisades on the theme of combat at the Loft gallery, which publishes a catalogue.

In 1995, he produced a large mural on rue de Ménilmontant, in the 20th century, “It's us the guys from Ménilmontant”.

Jérôme Mesnager is often associated with Nemo, whose fetish character is the black silhouette of a man in a raincoat wearing a hat. As such, he accompanied the Parisian urban art movement (Blek le rat, Miss.Tic, Jef Aérosol, Némo, etc.) and Figuration Libre in the early 1980s.

40 years of the White Corps in 2023.

NICE ART

Nice Art Ariane Pasco, co-founder of the Nice Art collective in 1986, has been active on walls ever since. Nice Art's medium is stencil, available in multiples and colors, and their gallery is the street, with its accidents and its patina. Nice Art has tried collage, vinyl customization and reverse-graffiti. His favorite themes, animals, rock icons, literature, writers and cinema, but also portraits of strangers or anonymous people. Nice Art's creed? Give back a place to nature in the city, put color on the walls and appropriate the public space with our values, so as not to suffer the hype of the consumer society. Among the projects of Nice Art: “Rimbaud goes around the world” wants to make poetry travel around the world by extending the journey of the poet; entrust a portrait on a book, vinyl or road map to travelers and collect their stories and images. Nice Art is committed with Emmaüs against exclusion, with Eric and Fabi in the Street Art Without Borders project and The Art Fabric, art at the borders of society. Exhibitions and performances: numerous exhibitions, solo or collective in France, Italy, Germany or the USA, participation in Art Shopping, Rimbad-Mania, Rivier'Art, Windows on Art, ExtraMuro's, Rue Stick, the Pussifollies … Artist in residence in Briare, Artist invited to Art Cité in Fontenay sous Bois, in Rouen, for Flaubert dans la Ville. Animation of PAC classes in Rouen, on Flaubert, in Briare and at the Ecole La Fontaine in Etampes, animation of numerous workshops, in Bagneux, Saint Ouen, Bobigny and for the City of Paris.