Gilles Aillaud
1928–2005 · French painter of animals, linked to Nouvelle Figuration
Gilles Aillaud (Paris, 1928 – Paris, 2005) was an internationally known French painter who also worked as a set decorator, scenographer and playwright. He was one of the main proponents of the Nouvelle Figuration and Figuration Narrative schools, movements in which the human figure and present-day subjects held a central place in art of the second half of the twentieth century.
Aillaud painted animals above all. He is best known for large canvases of zoo animals, in which humans are invisible but strongly present, and he also produced pictures of African wildlife in its natural environment. In 1964 he served as president of the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, and in 1968 he painted La bataille du riz, a depiction of an American soldier held prisoner by the Vietnamese.
His work shows how a painter can address subjects that seem remote from history and still speak to the present. His legacy is associated above all with his animal paintings and with his role in the figurative movements of postwar France.