When you step through the door of Alain Girelli’s workshop, a whole world opens up. A world of burnt 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 charred cade trunks. Alain shows you the material, speaking of it like a faithful companion. He explains how he selects the pieces that have fallen after the fires, how he strips and sculpts them, and combines them with colour or bronze. You observe his tools, his workbench, his fire, 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 combining sculpture and action. He takes out a notebook, a mould, a shard of memory. Nothing is fixed; everything is in motion, just like his thinking.
Time passes without notice. 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, cabinetmakers and charcoal makers from Umbria, passed on to him this organic bond with matter. Very early on, he chose the path of the hand. At 16, he earned a vocational certificate in joinery, then joined a local craftsperson in Seillans.
But the turning point came in 1970. Barely twenty years old, Alain stepped through the door of Max Ernst’s workshop. The encounter was decisive. It would no longer be only about assembling, but about questioning form, about bringing meaning out of matter. Sculpture became for him an expanded gesture, close to performance, poetry or ritual.
From then on, everything followed. He created works in cade wood – that southern juniper he never harvests alive, but gathers after fires. He developed a decorative process for concrete, exhibited in public spaces, worked in bronze, painted, moulded, cut, and leapt into action.
In the 1970s and 1980s, his works were shown alongside those of Picasso, Miró, Masson and Dubuffet. His name entered the Bénézit.
Having always lived in the Pays de Fayence, he lives to the rhythm of the seasons, the ashes and ideas. Nothing about him is fixed: neither forms nor certainties. He sculpts as one questions. He paints as one remembers.
The film made by Valentia preserves the record:
https://youtu.be/sBwWjuDQ8MA
Alain’s house is barely visible, tucked away in the scrubland among cistus shrubs and holm oaks. Nothing showy. 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: warmed wood, resin, cade dust. The trunks rest there, waiting. Some have already been worked, 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 energy. It is a place of living archives, where every sheet of paper bears the trace of an ancient fire.
Outside, the garden makes no effort to charm. It is dry, rugged, sun-drenched. It sets the rhythm. 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.