Bernard Rancillac is a French painter and sculptor born on August 29, 1931 in Paris. Bernard Rancillac was born on rue Hallé in Paris, the eldest of five brothers, one of whom, Paul, would become the sculptor Jean-Jules Chasse-Pot.
After an early childhood in Algeria until 1937, he spent the war in his father's house in Yssingeaux in the Haute-Loire and studied at the religious college. After the war, he returned to Bourg-la-Reine and completed his studies at the Lycée Lakanal. In 1949, under family pressure, he prepared himself without conviction for the teaching of drawing at the Met de Penninghen workshop where he met Bernard Aubertin. In 1953, he did his military service with the Moroccan infantry in Meknes. A local bookshop, La Comédie humaine, exhibited his first drawings. Back in France, he set up his first studio in Bourg-la-Reine in 1955 while working as a teacher. In 1958, a contract with the collector Dr. Audouin allowed him to leave teaching. From 1959 to 1962, Rancillac studied engraving at Atelier 17 of S.W. Hayter. In the meantime, in 1961, he wins the painting prize at the Paris Biennale. He marries Marie-Claude Teuma and moves to rue des Carmes. In 1963, the first nucleus of the New Figuration was formed around the Fels Gallery. The following year, with Gassiot-Talabot, Hervé Télémaque and Foldes, he was co-organizer of the exhibition "Mythologies quotidiennes" at Musée d'art moderne de Paris. That year saw the birth of his daughter Nathalie for whose birthday he executed a small painting each year. In 1966, he created his only piece of furniture, the elephant chair, which was presented at the exhibition "Les Assises du siège contemporain" at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in May 1968. In 1967, Rancillac made a trip to Havana with the Salon de Mai. In May 1968, he produced silk-screened posters at the Atelier populaire des beaux-arts. The first retrospectives of his work were held in 1969 in Vitry-sur-Seine and then in the museums of Saint-Etienne and Brest. In 1970, he moved to a studio in the Bastille district and the following year he moved to the lock of Boran-sur-Oise where he worked for about ten years. He is a lecturer at the University of Paris I. In 1982, Rancillac began the "exploded images" in his new studio in Arcueil. Between 1982 and 1987, he created theater sets for Michel Puig's productions at the Ulis theater, where he played various roles on several occasions: Téramène in Phèdre by Racine, Trissotin in Les Femmes Savantes by Molière, Basile in Le Barbier de Séville after Beaumarchais and Rossini. In 1988, Rancillac travels to China where he gives lectures in the main schools of fine arts.
"All political "events" impress me. I discovered this when I decided to do the paintings on the year 1966. I understood then that I was a political animal, not a social chronicler! At the origin of any artistic creation there must be an emotion. Very often it is of a political nature even when I paint Mickey Mouse, jazz musicians, cars or movie stars. The journalist and the photographer are more present on the event and faster in communication. But the painter has time for him the time to sink into the flesh of time. This is called history."
- Bernard Rancillac remarks collected in Paris in 1991