About

Ben, whose real name is Benjamin Vautier, is a French artist of Swiss origin, born on July 18, 1935, in Naples (Italy), of an Irish and Occitan mother, and a French-speaking Swiss father. He is the grandson of Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier, a Swiss painter of the 19th century. He spent his first five years in Naples. After the declaration of war in 1939, Ben and his mother traveled throughout Switzerland, Turkey, Egypt, Italy - finally settling in Nice in 1949. He studied at the Parc-Impérial school and attended boarding school Stanislas. His mother finds him a job at the Le Nain Bleu bookstore as an errand boy, then buys him bookstore stationery.

At the end of the 1950s, he sold it to open a small shop, whose facade he transformed by accumulating a number of objects and in which he sold second-hand records. Quickly, his shop became a place of meetings and exhibitions where the main members of what would become the School of Nice met: César, Arman, Martial Raysse, etc. Close to Yves Klein and seduced by New Realism, he is convinced that "art must be new and bring a shock".

In the early 1960s, several artists tried to appropriate the world as a work of art. Ben will sign everything that has not been signed: “the holes, the mysterious boxes, the kicks, God, the chickens, etc. », linking art and life, explaining that everything is art and that everything is possible in art.

In 1965, in his store, he created a gallery of three meters by three in his mezzanine: “Ben doubts everything. He exhibited there Biga, Alocco, Venet, Maccaferri, Serge III, Sarkis, Filliou... In the early 1980s, on his return from a year spent in Berlin thanks to a scholarship, he met young artists (Robert Combas, Hervé Di Rosa, François Boisrond, Rémi Blanchard, etc.), a group to which he gave the name Figuration Libre.

Very involved in the contemporary scene, he has always supported young artists and gives his point of view on all the news, whether cultural, political, anthropological or artistic, in his regular and prolific newsletters.

He has lived and worked since 1975 on the heights of Saint-Pancrace, a hill in Nice. Ben's works can be found in major private and public collections around the world, including MoMA in New York, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna, the MUHKA in Antwerp, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Solothurn Museum, the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice.