Biography
“I loved Simon very much. When I was with him, I felt immersed in the reality of living thought. The fact that you might not achieve fame doesn't preclude you from being an excellent artist. [...] And I can always bring back the veils of a memory, of what an evening in that studio brought me…”
Anne de Staël, 11 December 2023
Simon de Cardaillac was born in Nice on 10 February 1932, and grew up in a world intimately linked to art. His mother, Jeanne de Cardaillac, was close to Jeannine Guillou, Nicolas de Staël's partner at the time. This family connection placed Simon at the heart of a fertile artistic circle from an early age. As a child, he attended the baptism of Anne de Staël, and his mother was her godmother. A number of works by Staël were present in the Cardaillac home, in particular a portrait of Jeannine Guillou that Jeanne received as a present.
His friendship with Antoine Tudal, the son of Jeannine Guillou and Olek Teslar, had a lasting impact on his life. The two boys grew up together and even lived under the same roof at times. In 1946, after Jeannine's death, Antoine was taken in by the Cardaillacs. It was also Nicolas de Staël who introduced them to swimming together, throwing them from the rocks off the coast of Nice.
After training in architecture at the Arts Décoratifs in Nice, Simon moved to Paris, where he was introduced to the world of contemporary art by Antoine Tudal. The latter encouraged him to engrave his paintings and to illustrate his Simagrées collection. On his advice, Simon showed his work to Staël, who encouraged him to attend Johnny Friedlaender's engraving studio, which was then visited by the greatest artists of the École de Paris.
In 1956, Simon exhibited at the 11th Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, alongside Alechinsky, Sonia Delaunay, and Hartung. Shortly after, several American collectors and gallery owners became interested in his work. Photographer Irving Penn offered to promote his work in the United States, and his paintings became part of prestigious collections, including those of Helena Rubinstein, Charles Bronson, and TV presenter Richard S. Starck.
However, in 1966, with international opportunities opening up to him, Simon chose to withdraw from the market. He reunited with Hans Hartung, of whom he was the assistant between 1961 and 1964. He worked with him again until 1970, in particular on the design of the Field of Olives, Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman's home and studio. The couple, who were close to Simon, gifted him several of their works, including a Bergman painting in 1963.
Despite this closeness, Simon always kept his reserve. He refrained from using his connections to promote himself:
“Our reserve and the discretion with which we conduct ourselves leave me very free in my own work.” (Simon de Cardaillac, handwritten note, 26 June 1988)
He settled in Sèvres, in a large studio above Antoine Tudal’s, and continued to paint with discipline and independence. Anne de Staël, who visited him often, has a vivid memory of this place and his personality:
“His studio was remarkably warm and welcoming; in the most ideal way. Full of soul. It had large proportions, filled with paintings that had been started but not finished.” (Anne de Staël, 11 December, 2023)
In 1971, Simon joined the team at the Galerie de France, under the leadership of Myriam Prévot. He saw it as a "field of observation" of the art world. Until 1978, he participated in the organization of major exhibitions featuring the work of Soulages, Zao Wou-Ki, Alechinsky, Hartung, and Anna-Eva Bergman. He forged deep ties with certain artists, notably Alechinsky, who dedicated an ink painting and several kind words to him.
Throughout his life, Simon de Cardaillac remained true to his intimate and disciplined approach to painting. Away from the hustle and bustle, he chose a unique path, that of silence, observation, and a fair-minded view of the world and its forms.
"You are the one who watches. The observer, the one who can start a playful conversation with the silence of things."
(Letter from Anne de Staël to Simon de Cardaillac)
WORK
‘You see, I was leaving your new studio thinking: what is it about this studio that hasn't changed?
Everything is different, and yet everything is the same!
Ephemeral, precarious, enduring!’
Letter from Anne de Staël to Simon de Cardaillac
A choice of existence: a Nietzschean vision of art
Simon de Cardaillac was very sensitive to literature and philosophy. He was particularly interested in Nietzsche, and this familiarity with the German philosopher's thinking helps to better understand his work. Nietzsche saw art as an antidote to nihilism, to the belief that life is meaningless and worthless. According to Nietzsche, art was a means of giving meaning to life, even in the absence of absolute truths. And for Simon de Cardaillac, art was truly essential to life, to existence, as he wrote on several occasions:
‘The events of life, things, broken pieces, the things we don't talk about, have never distracted me from painting. I think they are part of it. For me, painting is above all a choice of existence.’
These few sentences are fully in line with Nietzsche's thinking on art, art understood as a means of affirming life in the face of the suffering and absurdities of existence - art capable of celebrating it.
‘It is a luxury that today we can put something in a painting, in a word, not because it concerns someone or something, but because it concerns ‘being’. I remember Simon's disturbing words: ‘For whom? For what? Above all, for no one and for nothing, for being’.
Throughout his life, Simon de Cardaillac's ‘great stimulus’ was art, which always drove him to act and create.
‘Even while eating dinner, Simon would quickly return to his paintings. [...] He was a very lively, very genuine person, and that was wonderful. It gave me a lot, the idea of work, of seriousness.’
‘Poetic recycling of urban, industrial and advertising reality’
‘Simon loved my father [Nicolas de Staël] very much, and I never felt that he was copying him. He was really searching for his own personal expression. His work was not about copying painters, but rather a beautiful personal quest for truth.’
Simon de Cardaillac's first paintings presented at Vichy Enchères reveal his familiarity with Nicolas de Staël, with whom he grew up and whose work shaped his sensibility. However, this influence faded relatively quickly, as Simon seemed more concerned with the medium and imagery of mass culture. In 1956, he took part in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. The artists of this movement considered abstract art as a means of representing ‘new realities’, i.e. non-perceptible realities of a conceptual or spiritual nature. Like Simon de Cardaillac's work, this artistic movement sought to reflect the new reality shaped by urban consumer society. In the tradition of Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades, reality was placed back at the centre of creation, notably through the use of everyday objects elevated to the status of art objects.
Simon de Cardaillac's work is firmly rooted in this artistic movement, as throughout his career he used – or ‘recycled’ – objects from the urban, industrial and advertising worlds. His work was thus based in particular on a profound reflection on the practice of painting and the possibilities offered by the medium.
The medium at the heart of the creative process
Throughout his life, Simon de Cardaillac worked with poor or raw materials, often found or recycled, in a vein similar to that of arte povera. The materials were often chosen for their raw appearance and their ability to evoke primitive or essential aspects of human existence.
Using collages and assemblages, he juxtaposed these different materials to create visual and tactile contrasts, exploring themes related to industrial reproduction and consumer society. Made from modest materials, the artist's works created a dialogue between art and the modern world, seeking to demystify the creative act and reduce art to its fundamental elements. Simon experimented with colour, texture and surface, often using simple and direct methods such as collage, assemblage, photography and engraving. Throughout his life, he rejected the idea of art as a luxury item or commodity, favouring more democratic and accessible approaches, and even refusing to sell his works or collaborate with dealers. When the writer and art critic Charles Juliet became interested in his work and asked to interview him for his biography, Simon de Cardaillac declined.
This reflection on the medium and imagery of mass culture led him to create a series based on the Carlsberg advertising logo. An exhibition was organised near Copenhagen in 1988 at the Chris Evers gallery, and also in France, in Paris, at Jean Perret's Style Marque gallery. All the works created at that time featured ‘bottles, labels or beer crates as motifs.’
‘Some brands have become so important in our collective imagination that they are landmarks for travellers who find their brightly coloured logos in every major city around the world. [...] Carlsberg is a prime example. [...] Red and white is the strongest combination in signage. Style Marque [...] wanted to pay tribute to this signature by teaming up with Simon de Cardaillac in a poetic and pictorial vision of the brand. The painter, transcending the constraints of graphic design, used the brand and various elements of its environment as a palette of shapes and colours. It is an unusual but enriching perspective for the brand's imagination, demonstrating the strength of this signature which, breaking free from the strict framework of norms, finds a new evocative power without losing any of its personality.’
The event was a success, as confirmed by this letter from Chris Evers: ‘People have shown a lot of interest in your paintings. I have actually sold all the oil paintings I bought from you in Paris.’ However, some of the works that Simon de Cardaillac had exhibited in Denmark were not returned to him, and he began to encounter difficulties, unable to present anything at the FIAC.
Signage
This question of medium is closely linked to that of signage, another predominant theme in Simon de Cardaillac's work. Signage, which includes road signs, graphic symbols, logos and other forms of standardised visual communication, was an endless source of inspiration for the artist, who regularly incorporated elements from this imagery into his creations. By taking these familiar elements and placing them in new and surprising contexts, he enjoyed creating dialogues between different modes of visual communication and the cultural meanings conveyed by these signs. Through this process, Simon de Cardaillac invites us to take a fresh look at our environment and question our lifestyles, which are often constrained by mechanical behaviours that are ingrained from an early age. This new vision of the urban world, both poetic and cynical, raises the question of freedom, as he evokes in this poetic text:
‘But let's return to our daily lives - here in a country less to the north but also a country of rain that makes us bow our heads in an atavistic and ancestral manner like dogs - and watch our feet move across the wet, black asphalt.
[...]
We read quickly, connecting quickly, directly from the signal, looking to understand the message being conveyed - red barrier, stop, danger, imperative direction arrows. Even if your mind wants to go elsewhere, you obey the meaning of the arrow faster than your disobedient mind.
The sign is there and... its signal.
No one can escape it. It is our reality, our everyday life.
[...]
The aesthetics of our environment become our permanent museum.
Is the eye starting to work better? Are we entering the age of the gaze?
The light turns red - Stop -
If it said ‘stop immediately!
Instantly press your foot on the brake pedal’:
accident... but no. The red signal, in the blink of an eye, triggered everything - a direct reflex - no reading.’
Simon de Cardaillac thus incorporated signage into his works in order to explore the aesthetics of the modern urban environment and play with its visual codes, challenging the viewer's expectations and blurring the boundaries between art and everyday life. The use of signage also stemmed from his interest in poor art and allowed him to create visually striking works in bold colours.
Characters and symbols
In addition to these elements of urban signage, Simon de Cardaillac regularly added digital and typographic characters to his compositions. He was particularly interested in the symbolic power of numbers and collected a pile of objects featuring numbers in his studio, such as calendar pages, playing cards, petrol station loyalty cards, stencils and number stamps. He used them to make collages or to stamp numbers on his works. This fascination with numbers is also embodied in a series of mixed-media and engraved greeting cards that he sent to his loved ones, including Anne de Staël, who commented on them in 1997:
‘My dear Simon, how lovely was 1997 in its sunny yellow ochre, that earth and the big 7 like a window open to the passing clouds of ochre and to the year! All the numbers on their own up to 9 fascinate me, but as soon as there are several, the multiplication slows down the emotion of a beautiful number on its own. It must be that a number retains ‘one day, one day we came into the world’ and contains all the clockwork of the world in which we lose ourselves!!’
Simon de Cardaillac also cut out pages from newspapers for his collages or to extract certain letters. He used characters in his works to explore the expressive possibilities of written language and numerical symbols. By incorporating these signs, sometimes entire sentences, Simon added different levels of meaning and interpretation to his creations, creating a dynamic interaction between the visual and the verbal. By deconstructing words and numbers, isolating them, fragmenting them or combining them in unconventional ways, he examined their structure, meaning and sound. Finally, he used them to create interesting visual patterns and to add a tactile dimension to the medium.
This fascination with characters and symbols also inspired a series of ink and acrylic paintings, created and engraved in the 1980s. These, particularly the black series, evoke the Asian calligraphy that fascinated the artist:
‘Chinese or Japanese calligraphy - Millennial ideograms - Tactile hieroglyphs - Sensuality of the gaze - Silences laden with subjectivity, freedom within the code but outside the code - The illustrated gaze rather than the commented and read gaze.’
Photography
Perhaps we should have started with photography when commenting on Simon de Cardaillac's work. It seems, in fact, to serve as the starting point for many of his works. We have several series of photographs taken by the artist that reveal his interest in signs, urban signage and architecture. These photos are distinctive in that they are always zoomed in to isolate a particular element. Thus, when he photographs Paris, no element actually identifies the capital, and it could be any other city. These photos mainly feature walls or industrial paint and/or advertising posters that have been peeled off or torn down. They also show graffiti-covered facades, numbers on shop windows, pedestrian crossings, red and white markings, sign arrows, architectural elements covered in bright colours, or just the asphalt... These photos, whether through their composition, motifs or bold colours, could be confused with the assemblages of Simon de Cardaillac's paintings.
All provide motifs, textures, plays of light and compositions that can be interpreted in an abstract way, and it is clear that these images are the source of many of his pictorial compositions.
Poetry and lyrical abstraction
Simon de Cardaillac painted in a sensitive and intuitive manner. The spontaneity of his brushwork, reinforced by bright colours, fluid forms and dynamic compositions, affirms his uniqueness.
In general, Simon de Cardaillac's works are often characterised by sharp, contrasting colours and organic, fluid forms, which reveal the painter's relationship with poetry. Some of his work is therefore close to lyrical abstraction, which is hardly surprising given the lifelong ties between Simon de Cardaillac and Hans Hartung.