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Long live Painting! The name of the VLP announces the color. For over thirty-five years, vital energy and enthusiasm have been the watchwords of this group of artists created in Paris in 1983, in the midst of the boiling phase of French graffiti. Eternal adolescents born in 1948 and 1947, Michel Espagnon and Jean Gabaret still form an inseparable duo which has lost none of its rage to paint. Wielding a guitar, a skateboard or a spray of paint in full swing, their characters, vividly drawn in black, stand out against a background of primary colors and explosive shapes. On their frescoes and four-handed canvases, bright red collides with electric blue, yellow or green. Tagged in the emergency, the words "tonic", "wild" or "action" shout their belonging to a combative and optimistic generation, their love for freedom and the need to create relentlessly ... From 1980, the VLP participated in outbreak of graffiti in France. Produced with industrial lacquer during punk-rock evenings in the Parisian catacombs, their first frescoes dynamise the codes of traditional painting studied at the Beaux-Arts and the Faculty of Plastic Arts in Paris. A rebellious practice coming from New York, graffiti began to spread in urban space. In reaction to the frantic development of the art market and to mercantile individualism, the VLPs are throwing themselves headlong into this ephemeral, free and accessible art, bringing together suburban walls and building site fences. Lightning bolt, arrow, light bulb: funny hieroglyphic logos, symbols of inspiration, mingle happily with words and stylized characters. Half abstract, half figurative, their compositions bring together in one and the same celebration the punk-rock spirit, the energy of Pollock, the style of Basquiat and Keith Haring (with whom they exhibited in 1987), the dynamism of the comics of superheroes, hip-hop and pop art aesthetics, Picasso's cubism, the spontaneity of art brut… and neo-expressionism or “Free Figuration”, a movement which from the end of the 1970s took the liberty of blithely mix genres and forms without a hierarchy of values, thereby countering the seriousness of conceptual and minimalist art. Posters, fanzines, zinc roofs: from the 1980s, VLPs explored all media, hacked billboards and decorated metro stations. One year after its first exhibition-performance at the Diagonale gallery in 1984, the group organized the first gathering of graffiti artists in Bondy and along the Ourcq canal: kilometers of painted walls and bridges unite pioneers like Miss Tic, Futura 2000, Speedy Graphito, Banlieue-Banlieue, Blek le rat or Jef Aérosol. Very quickly, the VLPs distinguished themselves by performing live painting performances during concerts in legendary clubs such as the Palace, La Loco or the Baron, in synergy with the new-wave music of Dépêche Mode or, more recently, the his rock-electro from Monster Children. In 2000, after a ten-year stay in Germany, the two lads returned to Paris with an emblem that will now invade all their works: ZUMAN. Anonymous and stylized, the result of a computer fusion of artist-user profiles from all over the world, this pointed-nosed character unites all creative minds in a single thinking head. "If you want, you're alive" he slips into his bubble, glued to a street corner. "I am a piece of utopia" he says further. In 2008, it was displayed on the Wall in rue Oberkampf then, in 2016, on an 18-meter-high fresco close to the Center Pompidou. With this symbol of the Artist as a universal scout, the VLP invite passers-by to never stop wondering, exploring and dreaming… Joséphine Bindé, Normalienne, Beaux Arts magazine
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Who is the artist?

Long live Painting! The name of the VLP announces the color. For over thirty-five years, vital energy and enthusiasm have been the watchwords of this group of artists created in Paris in 1983, in the midst of the boiling phase of French graffiti. Eternal adolescents born in 1948 and 1947, Michel Espagnon and Jean Gabaret still form an inseparable duo which has lost none of its rage to paint. Wielding a guitar, a skateboard or a spray of paint in full swing, their characters, vividly drawn in black, stand out against a background of primary colors and explosive shapes. On their frescoes and four-handed canvases, bright red collides with electric blue, yellow or green. Tagged in the emergency, the words "tonic", "wild" or "action" shout their belonging to a combative and optimistic generation, their love for freedom and the need to create relentlessly ... From 1980, the VLP participated in outbreak of graffiti in France. Produced with industrial lacquer during punk-rock evenings in the Parisian catacombs, their first frescoes dynamise the codes of traditional painting studied at the Beaux-Arts and the Faculty of Plastic Arts in Paris. A rebellious practice coming from New York, graffiti began to spread in urban space. In reaction to the frantic development of the art market and to mercantile individualism, the VLPs are throwing themselves headlong into this ephemeral, free and accessible art, bringing together suburban walls and building site fences. Lightning bolt, arrow, light bulb: funny hieroglyphic logos, symbols of inspiration, mingle happily with words and stylized characters. Half abstract, half figurative, their compositions bring together in one and the same celebration the punk-rock spirit, the energy of Pollock, the style of Basquiat and Keith Haring (with whom they exhibited in 1987), the dynamism of the comics of superheroes, hip-hop and pop art aesthetics, Picasso's cubism, the spontaneity of art brut… and neo-expressionism or “Free Figuration”, a movement which from the end of the 1970s took the liberty of blithely mix genres and forms without a hierarchy of values, thereby countering the seriousness of conceptual and minimalist art. Posters, fanzines, zinc roofs: from the 1980s, VLPs explored all media, hacked billboards and decorated metro stations. One year after its first exhibition-performance at the Diagonale gallery in 1984, the group organized the first gathering of graffiti artists in Bondy and along the Ourcq canal: kilometers of painted walls and bridges unite pioneers like Miss Tic, Futura 2000, Speedy Graphito, Banlieue-Banlieue, Blek le rat or Jef Aérosol. Very quickly, the VLPs distinguished themselves by performing live painting performances during concerts in legendary clubs such as the Palace, La Loco or the Baron, in synergy with the new-wave music of Dépêche Mode or, more recently, the his rock-electro from Monster Children. In 2000, after a ten-year stay in Germany, the two lads returned to Paris with an emblem that will now invade all their works: ZUMAN. Anonymous and stylized, the result of a computer fusion of artist-user profiles from all over the world, this pointed-nosed character unites all creative minds in a single thinking head. "If you want, you're alive" he slips into his bubble, glued to a street corner. "I am a piece of utopia" he says further. In 2008, it was displayed on the Wall in rue Oberkampf then, in 2016, on an 18-meter-high fresco close to the Center Pompidou. With this symbol of the Artist as a universal scout, the VLP invite passers-by to never stop wondering, exploring and dreaming… Joséphine Bindé, Normalienne, Beaux Arts magazine

When was VLP Vive La Peinture born?

The year of birth of the artist is: 1983