Jacques Le Nantec

Jacques LE NANTEC has been drawing since his early childhood. At thirteen, he restored a broken statuette and discovered a passion for sculpture.

However, there was no art school yet in Chambéry, where his father, a soldier, had just been stationed. Using pottery clay, he therefore taught himself sculpture in a small room lent by the Youth Center.

In October 1957, the Peuple et Culture gallery in Annecy exhibited his first fifteen works, including two life-size pieces.

In the meantime, he passed his first baccalaureate exam, and as a bonus, he entered the Concours Général in three subjects. But the following year, he only just passed his second baccalaureate: he sat for it as an independent candidate and, apart from Sculpture, he no longer wanted to hear about studying.

In 1959, his father was transferred to Paris. Jacques Le Nantec was able to gain admission to the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts… but he had to enroll in the Architecture section (Noël Le Maresquier Studio) to satisfy his parents' demands. There was only one way out, for an "honorable escape": he enlisted early in the army.

He returned from Algeria in 1962. To live and finance his sculptures, he worked successively as a decorator, comic strip artist (Spirou magazine) and wax figure modeler.

Self-taught, he persists and signs, continuing to study Anatomy…The one, of course, revealed by the women of the present time and far removed from the “academies" of yesteryear.