Armand Pellier
Armand Pellier (1910-1989) is a sculptor, stonemason, carrier and architect active in France, mainly in the Gard, from 1935.
Armand Pellier was born in 1910 in Marseille, in the Panier district where his father worked as a baker. He studied sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux-arts de Nîmes (1926-1930) and, after a break due to his military service in the Middle East, at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris (1932-1935). From that time on, he used as support for his creations a regulating layout inspired by the Golden Number.
In 1935, Armand Pellier moved to Nîmes as a sculptor. That same year, he met Jean Bernard (1908-1994), a sculptor who was very involved in the rebirth of companionship and who took Armand Pellier on this adventure.
In 1940-1941, with his wife Madeleine, he restored a stone quarry at Pont-du-Gard in Vers (Gard). This quarry, L'Authentique, provides a stone used since antiquity and given back to the spotlight during the Reconstruction (Buildings of the Old Port of Marseille, 1952-1954, arch. Fernand Pouillon and André Devin). This straw-yellow limestone, compact with coarse grains, becomes the matrix of Armand Pellier’s work: from sculpture, the latter slides towards the manufacture of chimneys, then towards decoration (pediments of the cooperative cellars of Languedoc-Roussillon designed by the architect Henri Floutier), to the scenography (Eucharistic Congress and Crafts Exhibition of Nimes in 1951 and 1956) and, finally, to the architecture.
In 1952, while Madeleine Pellier was in charge of the L'Authentique quarry, Armand Pellier established himself as a master builder thanks to the approval he received from the Fédération nationale des bureaux d'études et techniciens du bâtiment (Nîmes). He was not registered on the list of approved architects until nine years before his death in 1980.
Entering into architecture through decoration, Armand Pellier built a private clientele for which he built many individual villas in Nîmes and in his region: Costable house in Milhaud; Gosselin in Lédenon; Tinaud, Milcent, Mari, Pellenc, Escolier, Roche à Nîmes; Valette à Vauvert, Auréjal à Castillon; Pascal à Bouillargues; Conte à Caissargues. It obtains an approval for a model of House economy type that is characterized by concrete roofs with inverted slopes.
The field of commercial architecture also provides him with a privileged ground of expression as evidenced by the hotel Les Cabanettes (Arles, 1967; 1976-1978) or the many agencies of Crédit Agricole that he realized from the mid-1960s (Aigues-Mortes, 1964; Beaucaire; Bagnols-sur-Ceze; Remoulins; Sommières; Saint-Génies-de-Magoirès; Saint-Ambroix).
The Maison des Compagnons de Nîmes (1969) and the Maison de Saint-Etienne (1975) are among his major achievements.
Armand Pellier was soon appointed to public office: Robert Gourdon Sports and Cultural Centre in Vauvert; Gallician Post Office and Community Hall; Congénies Post Office; Agence Nationale Pour l'Emploi de Bagnols-sur-Cèze.
As self-taught as he is, Armand Pellier fashions, in a little more than thirty years of architectural practice, a work of rare strength. His approach extends his previous artistic practice: plasticity of matter (whether it be stone, concrete, wood, iron or ceramic), work on volume and its inscription in space, relationships of scales and proportions (regulatory tracings) base its approach in the field of sculpture and architecture. In addition, there is organic research that aims to integrate the building into its site not in a logic of osmosis but simply of mutual anchorage, dialogue and enrichment. The architectures of Armand Pellier do not fade but, on the contrary, are born and live in the landscape. Integrating the physical, climatic and plastic data of the site, Armand Pellier thus extends the path opened by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1953), notably in his mature works, or the research developed by Rudolph Schindler (1887-1953) and Richard Neutra (1890-1970) in their Californian achievements of the interwar period.
Sources
Bibliography
- CAUE du Gard, Joseph Massota. Armand Pellier. Regards d'architecture in 1995, exhibition brochure, Nîmes, CAUE du Gard, 1995.
- CAUE du Gard, A. Pellier, brochure presenting a draft publication, 2009.
- Llanta Anne-Marie, Peyzieu Jean, Prohin Robert, Filming. A dream of stone, introduction to a documentary project, Nîmes, CAUE du Gard, 2006.
Printed sources
- Calvi M., “Material of the Roman architects. The Pont-du-Gard stone today”, The Mausoleum: Art and techniques of quality rocks, Monthly Review, June 1968, no. 382, 36th year, pp. 1289-1325.
- Armand Pellier, exhibition catalogue, Nimes, 1991.
- S.N., “A boat-shaped pool”, Swimming poolNo. 20, April 1970, pp. 55-57.
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