Rating and value of paintings by Roger Edgar Gillet

If you own a work by or based on the work of artist Roger Edgar Gillet and would like to know its value, our state-approved experts and auctioneers will guide you.

Our specialists will carry out a free appraisal of your work, and provide you with an accurate estimate of its value on the current market.

Then, should you wish to sell your work, we will direct you to the best possible arrangement to obtain the optimum price.

Artist's rating and value

In his lifetime, Roger Edgar Gilet enjoyed great success and a high international rating that has not diminished today. His oils on canvas are his most prized works, attracting great interest from collectors.

The price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €15 to €41,000, a consequent delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to the artist's works.

A work by Gillet can fetch hundreds of thousands of euros, as demonstrated by his oil on canvas An Evening at Pollac, which sold for €41,000 in 2011, whereas it was estimated at between €10,000 and €15,000.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

Artist's style and technique

Gillet began his artistic career in the abstraction lyrique (Mathieu, Debré, Hartung) and informal art, in connection with the Second School of Paris. He then made a transition to expressive figuration from the 1960s onwards, introducing distorted human silhouettes, blurred faces and evoked architectures.

There's a certain tension between abstraction and figuration, his works continuing to carry a strong materiality and expressive gestures even when figuration is present. He works with a restrained chromaticism, his palette often composed of muted earth tones (ochres, browns, greys), with plays of chiaroscuro.

He conjures up emerging figures, faces and silhouettes that seem to emerge from the background, as if veiled beneath the pictorial material. He also draws on traditional inspirations with old masters such as Goya and Ensor, but also figures from caricature, satire, human cruelty and black humor.

Oil painting is Gillet's major technique, applied with density, impasto and texture. He mixes materials (sand, pebbles, glue or aggregates) into the paint to create a rough surface.

He also works in drawing, engraving and printmaking. Drawing is at once a preparatory tool, a visual memory and an autonomous medium. Engravings and prints are part of Gillet's body of work. He also emphasizes gestural work, the painter speaking of painting as a " paste " to be worked, kneaded, crushed, scraped and modeled.

Gillet also makes use of blurring and fading, faces and silhouettes are often blurred, almost erased, treated by scraping or dilution in the surrounding material. With strata and upstrokes, figuration " reappears " in an initially abstract painting, as if forms were emerging from layers of material expressivity.

The life of Roger Edgar Gillet

Roger-Edgar Gillet (1924 - 2004) was born in Brittany. He studied at the École Boulle (1939 - 1943). He studied with Maurice Brianchon at the École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs. He obtained a teaching position at the Académie Julian between 1946 and 1948.

In his early artistic years, he was in consonance with lyrical abstraction and art informel, championed by Michel Tapié and Charles Estienne. His first solo show was at Galerie Craven, Paris, in 1953. He received the Prix Fénéon in 1954, and the Prix Catherwood in subsequent years.

He discovered American art after the Prix Catherwood, and intensified his expressive practice. He had gallery connections, being represented by Galerie de France (1956 - 1963) and then by Jean Pollak's Galerie Ariel.

He lived between Paris, Sens and the Saint-Malo region. His thematic productions are successive, with series of faces, judges, bigots, musicians, mutants and more. He is behind major exhibitions and retrospectives at the CNAP in 1987, the Musée Galliera in 1971, " Cinquante ans de peinture " in Sens in 1999, and " La Marche des oubliés " at the Centre d'art contemporain in 1989.

Some of his works are held in public collections (Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Musées de Lyon, Rouen, Lille, Bruxelles, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles.

He stopped painting around 1998. His posterity includes around 100 solo exhibitions and a hundred group shows.

Market segmentation and artist rating

The artist's valued works are paintings on canvas, which are in the majority, drawings, watercolors, engravings and prints.

The so-called high-end segment is made up of large-format canvases, historic works and major pieces that once belonged to important collections. Moderate-sized canvases, lesser-known works and signed but smaller-format drawings make up the intermediate segment.

Prints, etchings and lithographs are the most accessible segment, but are often sought after for their print quality and rarity. Typical buyers are post-war (20th century) French collectors, galleries specializing in modern art, regional museums and European collectors.

The secondary market is dominant : most transactions go through auctions. The artist remains firmly rooted in the French market, with 94.5% of sales taking place in France.

At auction, his works sell for between USD 20 and 71,420. Important valuation factors are format, material, date of production, provenance, condition, exhibition record and reference catalog.

His signature

Although there are variations, here's a first example of his signature :

Expertise your property

If you happen to own a work by Roger Edgar Gillet, request a free appraisal without further delay via our form on our website.

A member of our team will contact you promptly to provide you with an estimate of the value of your work, as well as ad hoc information about it.

If you are considering selling your work, you will also be accompanied by our specialists in order to benefit from alternatives for selling it at the best possible price.