Gilles Aillaud L’encyclopédie de tous les animaux y compris les minéraux (The encyclopaedia of animals, including minerals)

from May 26, 2010 to July 18, 2010 François-Mitterrand / Julien Cain alley

Gilles Aillaud (1928-2005) was a figurative painter whose style was light and colourful. Very early, he found his favourite theme of inspiration, focusing on animals. During twenty years (1970-1990), his travels to Greece, Kenya and Egypt deeply changed his artistic gesture: animals escaped from cages fenced off with wire netting, cemented pits and tiled basins. In 1988, in collaboration with Franck Bordas, Gilles Aillaud started to realise an encyclopaedia in four volumes totalling 194 lithographs of animal studies with never-published texts by writers and friends such as Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Jean-Luc Parant, Jean-Louis Schefer and many others. Some excerpts from the « Histoire des animaux » by Aristote also come with the encyclopaedia. Visitors will soon meet these animals roaming free along the Julien Cain alley, at BnF.