PARIS.- Pierre Guyotat's visual oeuvre will find a new home in the permanent collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. The acquisition commission has accepted the Guyotat family’s generous donation of all the artist's remaining drawings. His manuscripts and archives have been held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France since 2004. Now, Guyotat's legacy will be safeguarded by two of France's most influential cultural institutions.

“May the Museum bring this priceless collection to life and help the public and researchers discover it, and allow them to appreciate the drawings one of the greatest writers of his time. May this donation be placed under the sign of a true ethic of hospitality and shared trust.” — Bernard Blistène, director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne

Pierre Guyotat was born in 1940 in Bourg-Argental, France, and died in 2020 in Paris, France. He was primarily known as a radical and subversive author. An innovator in the French language, Guyotat brought revolution into poetry, altering the very structures of language and culture.

Throughout his career, Guyotat’s writing was always in close collaboration with visuals artists. Though he began drawing as a teenager, his practice long remained a secret. Many of his early drawings were lost after he experienced a physical and personal collapse in the early 1980s, at which point he stopped drawing for three decades. In 2015 he returned to it, developing a prolific and remarkable oeuvre. Drawing from memory and symbolism, Guyotat's drawings present scenes of sexuality, freedom, joy and exploitation.

An uncompromising artist and poet, Pierre Guyotat's work can live on as a model for creatives of future generations. Xavier Hufkens was honoured to have exhibited Guyotat's drawings at the gallery.