Palissade

Jacques Halbert entered the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art in Bourges in 1973, after completing his training at the Brassart School in Tours. Having already been painting for several years, he had exhibited his work even before enrolling at the school, participating in various exhibitions in Anjou and Touraine, notably at the gallery of Jacques Davidson (Alexander Calder’s son-in-law) in Tours. At that time, his painting was strongly influenced by the School of Paris and by artists such as Nicolas de Staël.

His arrival in Bourges marked a decisive turning point. Confronted with a generation of students deeply engaged with the most recent developments in contemporary art, Halbert became aware of the gap between his abstract painting and the emerging artistic directions of the period. This realization led him to almost completely suspend his painting practice for more than a year. During this time, he turned his attention to other forms of visual inquiry, devoting himself in particular to the collection of popular imagery. Both intuitive and analytical, this activity proved to be a crucial moment in his development, paving the way for a redefinition of his artistic concerns and a gradual transformation of his relationship to images.

It was during this period that the cherry motif first appeared in his work. Its earliest manifestations did not occur on traditional supports but emerged in public space, painted on a construction fence in Bourges. This simple yet unexpected gesture marked a subtle but significant shift. The cherries subsequently migrated onto canvas. At that stage, however, these first cherries did not represent a conscious or programmatic decision destined to structure his future œuvre. Rather, they appeared as signs of an ongoing search, an unexpected field of exploration even for the artist himself. Through their formal simplicity, diffuse symbolic resonance, and potential for repetition, they opened up a space for experimentation that would continue to expand in the years to come, long before their importance was fully recognized.

In 1974, Jacques Halbert was commissioned to create a mural on a construction fence more than forty metres long in Bourges. In a preparatory sketchbook, he developed several proposals for interventions on hypothetical architectural structures. It was within these studies that the cherry motif first appeared. Among the various concepts considered for the fence, this was the project the artist ultimately chose to realize.