1977 

Everything started with Three towns and 3 collections: Grenoble, Marseille and Saint-Etienne.
The exhibition presented 90 works, indicative of the acquisition policy of three collections belonging to three French towns: Saint-Étienne, Marseille and Grenoble. It sprung from the collaboration between the curators of the following museums: 

  • The Museum of Art and Industry of Saint-Etienne,
  • The Cantini Museum of Marseille 
  • The Museum of Painting and Sculpture of Grenoble

Pierre Buraglio was displayed next to other well-known names such as Jacques Villéglé, Claude Viallat, Olivier Debré... The exhibition took place in the three towns during the winter of 1977.

At the end of the 1970’s, Pierre Buraglio was a young up-and-coming artist. The MAMC+ showed no hesitation in supporting him, acquiring his first works. Fenêtre (Window) (1981) thus joined the Museum collection in 1985.

2010

30 years later the MAMC+ invited Pierre Buraglio for a special project: Points de Fuite - Perspectives of and in contemporary art, an external exhibition of the Museum’s collections held at the Chateau Bâtie d’Urfé (50 km north of Saint-Etienne). It was in this chateau that Honoré d'Urfé - grand-son of Claude d'Urfé (1501-1558), the ambassador of François 1st to Rome – passed part of his youth and wrote Astrée, the first roman-fleuve of French literature.

The exhibition related the Museum collections with the notion of perspective, one of the most important inventions of the history of art, theorised in the Renaissance period. The Bâtie d’Urfé, built during this same era, offered to visitors passing through the rooms, games of desynchronisation or mirror effects. 

The works of Pierre Buraglio were presented as a satire of the re-emerging concept of the painting as a “window”, open to the world (Alberti, 1404-1472). Pierre Buraglio in fact worked on the window as a simple available medium for his work, and not in the metaphorical sense of the term. 

2019

In October 2017, Aurélie Voltz became the new director of the MAMC+. From the outset she began to initiate, with great discretion, an ambitious exhibition project of Pierre Buraglio. In 2019 she proposed Low Voltage / 1960-2019, a vast retrospective bringing together more than 200 of the artist’s works. From 8 June to 22 September 2019 visitors can explore in chronological order 60 years of the career of this committed artist, a faithful travel companion of the Museum.