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Coming from an agricultural background, Bernard Pag\u00e8s spent his childhood on the farm. In 1959, he went to Paris to try for the \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts. Rejected, he joined the Atelier d\u2019Art Sacr\u00e9. After starting out in painting and drawing, a visit to Brancusi’s studio definitively oriented him towards sculpture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1965, he settled in Coaraze<\/strong>, in the Nice hinterland. He gradually abandoned painting, working with plaster, earth, wood, and stone. He then frequented artists like Claude Viallat, Erik Dietman, Patrick Saytour, and absorbed the new ideas disseminated by the New Realists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the late 1960s, Pag\u00e8s participated in the first exhibitions of the Supports\/Surfaces<\/strong> movement, which challenged traditional art forms. He asserted himself through his simple, direct assemblages made of raw materials. <\/p>\n\n In 1971, he left the group to pursue solitary research, focused on the inventory of materials<\/strong> and their relationships. He created series such as the Piquets<\/em>, the Assemblages<\/em>, or the Tuyaux<\/em>, where he classifies, stacks, and juxtaposes. <\/p>\n\n His art becomes a rigorous exploration of contrasts, between heavy and light, natural and industrial, stable and unstable.<\/p>\n\n Pag\u00e8s works with poor or reclaimed materials<\/strong>: wood, concrete, metal, gravel, brick, iron, plastic… He assembles them without concealing them, revealing their textures, their tensions. <\/p>\n\n He establishes nomenclatures, inventories, where each element dialogues with the others. From the 1980s onwards, he created monumental sculptures<\/strong>: columns, caryatids, structures that give poetic value to imbalance. <\/p>\n\n His works sometimes seem on the verge of tipping over, suspended in controlled tension. This apparent instability expresses a fragile balance between construction and chaos. <\/p>\n\n Since the 1970s, Bernard Pag\u00e8s has regularly exhibited in France and abroad. Among the notable exhibitions: <\/p>\n\n His works are included in numerous public collections, and several monumental sculptures are installed in public spaces.<\/p>\n\n He lives and works in Contes<\/strong>, in the Alpes-Maritimes, where he continues his demanding dialogue with forms and matter.<\/p>\n\n In the park of Ch\u00e2teau d\u2019Arsac, several works by Bernard Pag\u00e8s display their raw presence:<\/p>\n\n These powerful and understated works integrate into the domain’s landscape, dialoguing with nature and architecture. They reflect Pag\u00e8s’s approach: to bring forth a universal sculptural language from the ordinary. <\/p>\n\n Bernard Pag\u00e8s constructs a body of work that contemplates matter, space, weight, and rhythm. Through his sculptures visible at Ch\u00e2teau d\u2019Arsac, he reminds us that art can emerge from the rough, the rugged, the recycled \u2014 and yet speak of \u201cbalance, beauty, and emotion\u201d. <\/p>\n\nThe Supports\/Surfaces Experience and Emancipation<\/h2>\n\n
A Physical, Free, and Structured Body of Work<\/h2>\n\n
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At Ch\u00e2teau D\u2019Arsac: Sculptures in Tension<\/h2>\n\n
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