SwissArtGallery · Documented identity
Armand Avril, a French painter and sculptor born in Lyon in 1926, is particularly known for his assemblages of cork stoppers, shown as early as 1970 at Galerie Le Lutrin in Lyon. After the war, he worked as a labourer and held several manual jobs in Villeurbanne, including as a plasterer and painter. Self-taught, he learned to paint by copying classical works discovered in Lyon’s museums, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the Musée Guimet.
In the 1960s, a year-long stay in Africa, notably in Senegal, fostered his interest in collecting African art. There he met the artist Louis Pons, whose practice of assemblage and collage introduced him to collage and reuse techniques. In 1968, Avril helped organise an exhibition of Gaston Chaissac at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, together with the critic René Deroudille and the curator Madeleine Rocher-Jauneau.
That same year, while he had been playing rugby for fourteen years, he absent-mindedly carved a champagne cork and discovered its formal possibilities. His first arrangements of cork stoppers, set in printers’ type cases, were shown two years later at his solo exhibition at Le Lutrin. Following his first presentation in Paris, his works entered the collections of the Centre national d’art contemporain and the Musée national d’art moderne. In 1975, he created the series « Alignement », made up of assemblages of balls. Made between 1971 and 1976, the assemblage « La Mort blanche » was presented in 1993 at the Halle Saint-Pierre, in the exhibition « Les Marges de l’art contemporain ».
This profile brings together identity references for Armand Avril and paintings, drawings and works on paper documented in auction catalogues.
Dobiaschofsky · Schuler · Piguet
References include catalogue entries and available results; they do not all represent completed sales. Attributed works and special lots are excluded from the priced results.
Mixed media on paper
Lot drei Kompostionen
Mischtechnik auf Papier
Catalogue period : 2025-12-02
Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed
Estimate : CHF 900–1600
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Oil on canvas
Ohne Titel
Öl auf Leinwand
Catalogue period : 2025-09-12
Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed
Estimate : CHF 400–600
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Mixed media and collage
Fille à cheval.
Mischtechnik und Collage
Date to be documented
Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed
View the lot at the auction house ↗Gouache
La corrida
gouache
Catalogue period : 2014-06-18
Published result : 480 CHF
Fees not specified in the available data
Estimate : CHF 500–800
View the lot at the auction house ↗SwissArtGallery documentary note based on the cited sources. Titles, media and qualifications are provided in the profile language; the original catalogue wording remains available in each record.
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