Robert Malaval was born in Nice on July 29, 1937. He studied at the Félix Faure Secondary school . He began his artistic activities in 1955 and lived in Nice until 1957 before settling in the Alps of Haute Provence then, from 1963 , in Paris. He created, towards 1960, the plastic concept of " the white food " by resuming the technique of the carnavaliers of Nice: the pasteboard. This white material in concretions, invaded, as by digesting them, all the supports, the furniture, the armchairs, the most different objects up to fragments of human bodies. This " cosmic cancer ", as he named it, transformed the vision of forms and showed an invasion of daily objects. He worked then on the image of thrown bodies, after Klein's works. The exhibitions mixed paintings, objects and sounds which he recorded himself. This dandy, fascinated by rock music, particularly by the Rolling Stones, translated that universe in his creation. He used colours and glitters which create brilliant stellar universes echoing the world of pop stars and rock and roll; his paintings were spangled like electric guitars or decorated pinball machines. But these stardusts also showed a wide musing on the cosmos. His fascination for death and for the burst out in a definitive explosion appeared in his series on the Kamikazes, from 1975: " the despair transformed into romanticism " as he would say. In 1980, he was engaged in a long experience of painting in public at the House of the Arts of Créteil. The fulgurance of this "scenic" work, in a rock - star manner, conjugated to the aggressiveness of the public, led him to a kamikaze's solution: he commited suicide, in Paris, shooting himself in the head on August 8 or 9, 1980.
Gilbert CROUÉ
