When you push open the door to Alain Girelli’s workshop, an entire world unfolds. A world of burnt wood, incense dust, and age-old gestures repeated a thousand times with the same care.
The visit begins in the heart of the workshop, among charred cade trunks. Alain shows you the material and speaks of it like a faithful companion. He explains how he chooses the pieces that fell after the fires, how he strips them, sculpts them, and brings them together with colour 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 oath of 1975, his time with Max Ernst, his performances blending sculpture and action. He brings out a notebook, a cast, a fragment of memory. Nothing is fixed; everything is in motion, just like his way of thinking.
Time passes without you noticing. As you leave, Alain hands you a small sachet of cade incense. A simple gesture, almost a sign. As if to say 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 where wood was not a material but a living memory. His ancestors, joiners and charcoal makers from Umbria, passed on to him this organic bond with the material. Very early on, he chose the path of working with his hands. At 16, he earned a carpentry vocational certificate, then joined a local craftsman in Seillans.
But the turning point came in 1970. Barely twenty years old, Alain pushed open the door to Max Ernst’s workshop. The encounter was decisive. From then on, it would no longer be simply about assembling, but about questioning form, bringing meaning out of matter. Sculpture became for him an expanded gesture, close to performance, poem, or ritual.
From that point on, everything followed. He created works in cade wood — this southern juniper that he never harvests while living, but gathers after fires. He developed a decorative process for concrete, exhibited in public spaces, worked in bronze, painted, cast, cut, and launched himself forward.
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 for most of his life, he moves to the rhythm of the seasons, the ashes, and ideas. Nothing about him is fixed: neither forms nor certainties. He sculpts as one asks questions. He paints as one remembers.
The film shot by Valentia preserves the record:
https://youtu.be/sBwWjuDQ8MA
Alain’s house is barely visible, tucked away in the garrigue among cistus and holm oaks. Nothing showy. A pale stone building, open to the wind, standing there like an extension of the landscape.
The ground floor houses the workshop. A large, bright room filled with deep scents: warmed wood, resin, cade dust. The trunks rest there, waiting. Some have already been cut into, others are still raw, carbonized, motionless.
Upstairs, the walls are covered with canvases, notebooks, drawings, and sculptures. There you can read the stages, the hesitations, the bursts of inspiration. It is a place of living archives, where every sheet of paper preserves the trace of an ancient fire.
Outside, the garden makes no attempt to seduce. It is dry, rough, sunlit. It sets the rhythm. It is where Alain often stops to listen.
A coffee on the table, and the conversation can begin.
Provence & Côte d’Azur guide
Hilltop villages, the Frioul Islands, craft ateliers and heritage places: find Valentia experiences gathered to prepare your next discovery in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.
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.