When you step through the door of Alain Girelli’s workshop, an entire world opens up. A world of charred wood, incense dust, and ancient gestures repeated a thousand times with the same care.
The visit begins in the heart of the workshop, among the scorched cade trunks. Alain shows you the material and speaks of it like a faithful companion. He explains how he chooses pieces fallen after wildfires, how he strips and sculpts them, and how he combines them with color or bronze. You observe his tools, his workbench, his fire, and the traces of his hands on the blackened wood.
As the conversation unfolds, he tells his story. The vow of 1975, his time with Max Ernst, his performances blending sculpture and action. He takes out a notebook, a cast, a fragment of memory. Nothing is fixed; everything is in motion, just like his thinking.
Time passes unnoticed. When you leave, Alain hands you a small sachet of cade incense. A simple gesture, almost a sign. As if to tell you that the visit does not end there.
Alain, +50 years of experience
Sculptor, painter & performer
(2) reviews
Alain was born in Draguignan, into a family for whom wood was not a material but a living memory. His ancestors, cabinetmakers and charcoal burners from Umbria, passed on this organic bond with the material. Very early on, he chose the path of working with his hands. At 16, he earned a vocational certificate in carpentry, then joined a local craftsman in Seillans.
But the turning point came in 1970. Barely twenty years old, Alain pushed open the door of Max Ernst’s workshop. The encounter was decisive. From then on, it would no longer be only about assembling, but about questioning form and bringing meaning out of the material. For him, sculpture became an expanded gesture, close to performance, poetry, or ritual.
From there, everything followed. He created works in cade wood — this southern juniper that he never takes from living trees, but gathers after wildfires. He developed a decorative process for concrete, exhibited in public spaces, worked in bronze, painted, cast, cut, and took flight.
In the 1970s and 1980s, his works appeared alongside those of Picasso, Miró, Masson, and Dubuffet. His name entered the Bénézit.
Having lived in the Pays de Fayence all his life, he moves to the rhythm of the seasons, ashes, and ideas. Nothing about him is fixed: neither forms nor certainties. He sculpts as one questions. He paints as one remembers.
The film shot by Valentia preserves a trace of this:
https://youtu.be/sBwWjuDQ8MA
Alain’s house is barely visible, nestled in the garrigue between cistus shrubs and holm oaks. Nothing flashy. A pale stone building, open to the wind, set there like an extension of the landscape.
The ground floor houses the workshop. A large, bright room filled with deep scents: heated wood, resin, cade dust. The trunks rest there, waiting. Some are already worked on, others still raw, charred, motionless.
Upstairs, the walls are covered with canvases, notebooks, drawings, and sculptures. You can read the stages, the hesitations, the bursts of inspiration. It is a place of living archives, where every sheet of paper bears the trace of an old fire.
Outside, the garden does not try to seduce. It is dry, rugged, sunlit. It sets the pace. It is there that Alain often stops to listen.
A coffee on the table, and the conversation can begin.
Cancellation policy:
Free cancellation if more than 48 hours before the experience starts. Between 48 and 24 hours before, 50% of the amount is due. Less than 24 hours before, cancellation is non-refundable.
Caty
26/01/2025
On ne voit pas passer le temps avec Alain,tant sa vie d'artiste est dense, riche d'expériences,de rencontres et de partage avec de nombreux artistes, Des créations hors normes : bois de cade brut ou soyeux, pierres, formes, couleurs, esthétique, tout est magnifiquement surprenant !
Michel
26/01/2025
Alain, un artiste attachant et atypique, nous fait découvrir son univers et ses œuvres avec passion. une très belle rencontre.