Martial Raysse, born in Golfe Juan the 17th of February 1936, is a french plastic artist. He lives and works in Issigeac.
Son of Vallauris' ceramists, Raysse began to paint and write at the age of 12. After serious studies and an intensive practice of athletics, he decided to dedicate himself to painting at the age of 19. First, Raysse realized assemblies of detritus and diverse objects, presented in plexiglas boxes. In a few years, he became one of the most famoust abstract painters of the Riviera and knew an increasing success.
Fascinated by the rough beauty of plastic, Raysse developed his "vision's hygiene" concept, by using new objects made of plastic, belonging to the new consumption society.
During a stay in the United States, Raysse became closer to Pop art and belonged, since its creation in 1960, to the New Realists movement.
The aesthetic that he developed since 1972 is completly different from his Pop works of his last period. Raysse notably dedicated himself to drawing, and renewed with traditional painting and sculpture in the 1970s-1980s.
Raysse's work uses diverse materials and techniques: plastic, plexiglas, cardboard, paper, fabric, paint, mirror, artificial lights, objects, photographs, photocopies, assembly, enlargment, neon, for which he said: "I discovered neon light. It is the living color, a color beyond color".