Claude Viallat, the Bull and the Canvas of Nîmes

At 83 years old, affable and always alert, the champion of the Supports/Surfaces movement is illustrating a book of poems by Philippe Denis for Éric Coisel publications. At the same time, he is working to enrich his collection of bullfighting objects which are deposited at the city’s Henriette and Claude Viallat Museum of Bullfighting Culture , and is supervising his next exhibitions in Zurich, at the Andres Thalmann Gallery, and at the Priory of Manthes, south of Lyon, with his two assistants Jean Fabro and Alexandre Giroux. Born and bred in Nîmes, the painter—who recently exhibited at the Venet Foundation located in Le Muy, near Saint-Tropez—moved into the former post house, where he still lives with his wife Henriette, and part of which serves as a studio, in 1990. In the sunny courtyard, the smell of paint mixes with that of old recycled objects and textiles: “On the ground floor is the storage area for my bullfighting objects, where I also store fabric and artifacts for work”. A “partègue”—a pole used to move boats in Occitan marshes—is suspended with a scarlet cloth hanging from it, a work by his late associate Toni Grand. Nearby, a trophy (“Bull Slaughter”) overlooks the cheerful…