| Michel
Nedjar
please click image to enlarge |

artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1998
inventory: MN 524
media: Mixed Media on paper
size: 25.6 x 21.3 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled
inventory: MN 2985
media: Acrylic on paper
size: 10 x 8 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled
inventory: MN 2986
media: Acrylic on paper
size: 8 1/2 x 9 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled
inventory: MN 2987
media: Acrylic on paper
size: 10 x 8 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled
inventory: MN 2989
media: Acrylic on paper
size: 11 x 11 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled
inventory: MN 2990
media: Acrylic on paper
size: 18 x 12 1/2 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1997
inventory: MN 52
media: Acrylic on paper
size: 22 3/4 x 16 1/2 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2006
inventory: MN 1317
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 9 x 6 1/4 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2003
inventory: MN 1318
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 9 x 6 1/4 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2005
inventory: MN 1322
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 9 x 6 1/4 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2003
inventory: MN 1338
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 4 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2003
inventory: MN 1340
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 4 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2003
inventory: MN 1341
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 8 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2002
inventory: MN 1703
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 8 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2003
inventory: MN 1706
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 8 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2003
inventory: MN 1708
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 8 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2003
inventory: MN 1711
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 8 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2003
inventory: MN 1713
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 4 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2003
inventory: MN 1714
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2005
inventory: MN 1715
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 6 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2005
inventory: MN 1716
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 9 x 6 1/2 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2005
inventory: MN 1722
media: Mixed media on envelope
size: 6 1/2 x 9 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2005
inventory: MN 2540
media: Mixed media layered brown paper
size: 38.8x 28.7 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1997
inventory: MN 2541
media: Mixed media layered brown paper
size: 40.6 x 23.2 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1992
inventory: MN 2542
media: Mixed media layered brown paper
size: 36.6 x 23.2 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 2008
inventory: MN 2544
media: Mixed media on paper
size: 27.6 x 20.3 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1988
inventory: MN 2546
media: Mixed media on cardboard
size: 19.9 x 27 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1989
inventory: MN 2547
media: Mixed media on layered paper
size: 28.9 x 21.7 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1998
inventory: MN 2548
media: Mixed media on flattened paper bag
size: 25.8 x 19.5 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1991
inventory: MN 2549
media: Mixed media on paper
size: 25 x 18.3 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1998
inventory: MN 2550
media: Mixed media on clothed backed paper
size: 31.3 x 15.2 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1998
inventory: MN 2552
media: Mixed media on paper backed newspaper
size: 23.4 x 15 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1998
inventory: MN 2555
media: Mixed media on flattened cardboard box
size: 17.1 x 15 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1993
inventory: MN 2533
media: Mixed Media on cardboard
size: 42 x 30 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1993
inventory: MN 2535
media: Mixed Media on cardboard
size: 41 x 30 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1998
inventory: MN 528
media: Mixed Media
size: 25.6 x 19.7 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1998
inventory: MN 2545
media: Mixed Media on cardboard
size: 27 x 20 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1998
inventory: MN 2553
media: Mixed Media on cardboard
size: 20 x 14 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1996
inventory: MN 534
media: Mixed Media on cardboard-backed paper
size: 21 x 15 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1992
inventory: MN 505
media: Mixed media on cardboard
size: 30.3 x 42.1 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 93
inventory: MN 2534
media: Mixed media on cardboard
size: 29.5 x 41.3 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1994
inventory: MN 2536
media: Mixed media on cardboard
size: 42.1 x 30.3 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1988
inventory: MN 523
media: Mixed media on wallpaper
size: 22 x 24.8 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1998
inventory: MN 2994
media: Acrylic on paper
size: 40 x 24 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Untitled, 1996
inventory: MN 2538
media: Mixed media on cardboard
size: 41.5 x 29.9 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Poupee
inventory: MN 500
media: Mixed Media
size: 34 x 12 x 9 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Poupee
inventory: MN 500
media: Mixed Media
size: 34 x 12 x 9 inches
price: contact gallery
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artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Poupee
inventory: MN 2571
media: Cloth and Mixed Media
size: 11 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 3 inches
price: contact gallery |

artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Poupee 2005
inventory: MN 1691
media: Mixed Media
size: 9 1/2 inches tall
price: contact gallery |

artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Poupee 2005
inventory: MN 1692
media: Mixed Media
size: 15 3/4 inches tall
price: contact gallery |

artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Poupee
inventory: MN 2572
media: Cloth and Mixed Media
size: 19 x 5 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches
price: contact gallery |

artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Poupee 2005
inventory: MN 1693
media: Mixed Media
size: 20 inches tall
price: contact gallery |

artist: Michel Nedjar
title: Poupee
inventory: MN 1693 (reverse)
media: Mixed Media
size: 20 inches tall
price: contact gallery |
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Michel Nedjar
Michel Nedjar was born near Paris in 1947. Both his Jewish parents had emigrated
to France in the early 1920s, his father from Algeria and his
mother from Poland. Nearly all his grandmothers family were deported
during the war and died in concentration camps: his mother and grandmother
survived by hiding on a farm in Brittany. His father developed a prosperous
business as a master-tailor and Nedjar grew up amid garments and sewing
machines, making his first dolls out of cast-off fabrics and tree roots,
often playing with them in the cellar. On weekends he would help his
grandmother, who ran an vintage clothing stall at the Paris flea market.
After leaving school in 1961, he worked as an apprentice tailor for
several years. Following a brief period of military service and a bout
with tuberculosis, he set forth in 1970 on a series of momentous journeys
that took him to Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India
and Nepal. By 1975 he had twice visited Mexico, as well as Belize and
Guatemala, where the dolls sold in the marketplace fascinated him. It
was my first contact with High Magic, craftsmanship, the Baroque, death,
he later remarked. Back in Paris, he began fashioning his own fetish
dolls out of rags, twigs, sacking and other flea market rubbish. At
first colourful and comical, the dolls soon became sombre, unkempt and
fearsome; some took the form of morbid totems saturated in mud and blood.
Later on, he produced low reliefs of massed figures, making more and
more conscious allusions to the Holocaust. In 1980 he began to draw,
often working by night to produce stacks of images on old envelopes,
sheets of sample wallpaper or the back of old record sleeves. He had
meanwhile exhibited at the Atelier Jacob in Paris where he was profoundly
moved by a display of drawings by the classic Swiss outsider artist, Aloïse
Corbaz. Jean Dubuffet, who found his work horrifyingly tragic,
contacted and encouraged him. Nedjar's dolls are permanently featured in Dubuffet's Collection d'Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 1982, Nedjar became a co-founder of the L'Aracine Collection
of Art Brut.
Over the past two decades, Nedjar has become an internationally-known
artist who shows in galleries across Europe and North America and is
represented in all major Art Brut collections. For many years, he has
also been a keen amateur filmmaker. He continues to travel, returning
regularly to Mexico and India. His mature work embodies authority and
dignity, as well as being conceived on a large scale. Animal and bird
figures, and the human face reduced to an owl-like mask, are constant
motifs. Whether in two or three dimensions, his expressions remain true
to a fundamental vision of the fragility of human identity, and of the
sufferings of the downtrodden and dislocated victims of modern history.
His is a disquieting pursuit of human traces, which sometimes insists
on the monstrous, and the horrific. At other times, his imagery takes
on a transcendent eloquence, manifesting something of the aura-like
poise of ancient religious art.
© derived from Roger
Cardinal 2004 for the catalogue: Insita 04 International
Exhibition of Self-Taught Art, The Slovak National Gallery, Bratisla,
Slovakia
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Michel Nedjar featured in latest issue of Raw Vision Magazine:
MY DOLLS SAVED ME
Laurent Danchin raises a few questions about the shamanistic art of Michel Nedjar.
Raw Vision #63 Summer 2008
http://www.rawvision.com/articles/63/nedjar/nedjar.html |
Excerpt:
Much has been written about Nedjar since Roger Cardinal's in-depth study published in Lausanne in 1990: of his childhood in a large Jewish family in an idyllic house with a garden in a northern suburb of Paris; of the brutal figure of his father, a Sephardi tailor reminiscent of Kafka's terrible genitor; of his Ashkenazi mother and his Polish, Yiddish-speaking grandmother, who introduced Nedjar to schmattes, the old rags which he later adopted as material for his handmade embryonic dolls. And of his encounter with Téo Hernandez, a Mexican experimental film-maker who became his mentor in the arts; and of their subsequent travels to Morocco, India, Mexico and elsewhere, after which he felt an urgent 'need to work in magic' and hence began his artistic production around May 1976.
One event that dates back to Nedjar's youth is often mentioned also, and is supposed to have been the original trauma that later triggered his creative output: the evening when, at the age of thirteen, he stumbled upon Alain Resnais' movie Nuit et Brouillard on television and discovered the terrifying reality of the Nazi concentration camps. 'I had two aunts who returned from Auschwitz and they told us,' recalls Nedjar. 'But words don't have the power of the image. Resnais' movie really shook me. After the Shoah, that was it: I had left Eden.' And it is a fact that, many years later, Nedjar discovered with amazement that he handled his dolls in the same way that he had seen the soldiers in the film pile up the corpses in the pits when he was a teenager.
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