Engraving The key to dreams - Jean-Pierre Velly

Born in Audierne, Finistère, in 1943, Jean-Pierre Velly is a French painter, draughtsman and engraver who has lived in Italy for more than half his life. A student at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Toulon and the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and an admirer of Dürer, he concentrated on engraving...

Born in Audierne, Finistère, in 1943, Jean-Pierre Velly is a French painter, draughtsman and engraver who has lived in Italy for more than half his life. A student at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Toulon and the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and an admirer of Dürer, he concentrated on engraving, which became his preferred artistic medium. In 1966, he won the Grand Prix de Rome for intaglio engraving for Elle se nomme la Clef des Songes, and stayed at Villa Medici from 1967 to 1970. Akin to Visionary Art, nature and industrial elements mingle and meet in his engravings, within an imaginary, almost fantastic universe. La Clef des Songes heralds a theme that the engraver developed increasingly from the 1970s onwards, that of the exploitation and destruction of nature.