Rating and value of paintings, drawings and photographs by Pierre Molinier

If you own a work by or after the artist Pierre Molinier, and would like to know its value, our state-approved experts and auctioneers will offer you their appraisal services.

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

An important artistic figure of his time, Pierre Molinier has established himself as a sure bet on the art market. Constantly evolving, his value remains high and his works are sold internationally.

In the auction room, his canvases, part of the body art movement, painted in the 1960s, are the most sought-after and therefore prized. Watercolors are also very popular with collectors.

A work by Molinier can fetch a hundred thousand euros at auction, as demonstrated by his oil on isorel, Le rêve de l'Ange, which fetched €100,000 in 2024, whereas it was estimated at between €25,000 and €35,000.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

Artist's style and technique

Pierre Molinier would explore several mediums and styles before finding the stylistic vein that would define him, working on different overlapping subjects : firstly a fetishism on legs, but also androgyny and transvestism.

Although he was a house painter, specializing in trompe l'oeil like his father, he began producing figurative canvases in the 1920s, until the 1940s. During this period, he produced mainly landscape paintings and still lifes.

However, he was already beginning to work on portraits, taking his wife and daughter, as well as himself, as his first models. He worked from nature and sought above all structure in his portraits, joining the Cubist and Expressionist avant-gardes on this point.

However, with regard to his landscape paintings, he is closer to the Impressionists in the facture, particularly in his approach to light and landscape. As a member of the Société des Artistes Bordelais Indépendants, he exhibited his paintings regularly from 1928.

His work and career took a decisive turn in 1951, when he created a scandal with one of his first erotic canvases, Le Grand Combat, which depicts both intertwined body parts and undefined limb parts.

In this context, this painting crosses both the figuratism of his early career and abstraction, which he would work on until the end of his career, incorporating notable expressionist influences. The painting was very poorly received and considered indecent. It was acquired by the politician Roland Dumas.

In 1989, as attitudes and art criticism had evolved, his painting was once again unveiled to the public at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux.

The influence of André Breton and surrealism

Pierre Molinier's style was also strongly influenced by poetry. A poet himself, he sent reproductions of his paintings and handwritten poems to André Berton, a leading Surrealist, for advice.

Breton, despite his reputation as a fierce critic, gave Molinier's work an enthusiastic welcome. He offered him his support and the chance to exhibit his work in Paris. He thus exhibited 18 canvases at the À l'étoile scellée gallery, and his show was prefaced by Breton himself.

Pushed by the poet, he committed himself to Surrealism in painting as well as poetry, and became a member of this group from 1955 to 1969 - and even drew the second issue of the magazine Le surréalisme même, and at the same time exhibited a canvas at the 8th edition of the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme.

Pierre Molinier was not, however, an active member of the movement, and Breton distanced himself from the artist - some sources recount that he received a greeting card deemed too pornographic.

The practice of collage

Aside from his work in painting, where the artist mainly uses oil on canvas and oil on isorel, he also works extensively with photography, and more specifically with the photomontage technique.

He creates a series of self-portraits based on photographs of himself wearing stilettos, corsets, stockings and gloves. He is also waxed, made-up and sometimes wears a wolf, and works with fabric textures such as fishnet, or felt hats.

He also integrates photographs of his friends and models into his photomontages, deliberately cutting them out to keep only certain body parts. He then recomposes a body using the elements he has cut out.

At the end of his career, he concentrated mainly on the themes of eroticism and androgyny, creating various collage series while not neglecting oil on canvas. He took as his model Thierry Agullo, also an artist - whom he photographed before cutting out the clichés, and dedicated an entire series to him in the year of his death.

The life of Pierre Molinier

Pierre Molinier (1900-1976) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and photographer, who did not fit into any particular movement but produced numerous works around eroticism, themes of androgyny, and transvestism.

Born in Agen, his father was a house painter and decorator who specialized in trompe-l'œil, particularly marble and wood. He learned this trade alongside his father from 1913 onwards, and at the same time took drawing and painting classes at the Agen municipal school.

From 1919 onwards, he settled in Bordeaux as an artisan painter, a trade he practiced until 1960. He married in 1931, and had two children. The 1940s were difficult for the artist, as he lost his father to suicide and his wife left the marital home.

The dramas of his life fed into his painting, as he created a scandal in 1951 by exhibiting Le Grand Combat, one of his first erotic canvases. The Salon boycotted his painting and he was forced to cover his canvas with a veil, on which he hung a manifesto so that visitors and critics alike would understand his approach.

He displayed a lifetime of unstable behavior, being violent with his wife and family, slapping the former and attempting to shoot his cousin with a revolver. These events earned him a month's imprisonment.

At the end of his life, he gave up his job as a house painter completely in order to devote himself entirely to painting and photography.

He committed suicide in 1976 by shooting himself in the mouth.

Focus on Le Grand Combat numéro 1, Pierre Molinier, 1951

In his painting Le Grand Combat, exhibited in 1951 at the Salon des artistes indépendants de Bordeaux, creating an unprecedented scandal and forcing the artist to cover his painting with a veil, Molinier innovates and signs one of his most famous paintings.

Representing contorted body parts, whose nature is hard to guess, he explores his fantastical world through the technique of photomontage mixed with oil paint.

The atmosphere of the work is quite unsettling, almost suffocating, representing the twisted, fetishistic universe of the artist. He plays with the codes of sexuality and identity, in a transgressive eroticism, to create ever greater confusion.

He plays with double and symmetry, resorting to compositions that confuse the viewer's perception. He multiplies shapes and body parts to create a hypnotic, unsettling and disturbing vision.

The palette is dark and the lighting dramatic to intensify the phantasmagorical side. It is not, however, a complete break with all photographic practices, as the play of light recalls certain 19th-century photographs.

The Surrealist heritage is assumed, particularly that of Hans Bellmer,Yves Tanguy, René Magritte, Alberto Savinio and André Breton. Through this prism, Molinier plays on the distortion of bodies and their assembly in order to better question identity disorder.

 Recognizing the artist's signature

Not all of Pierre Molinier's works are signed, and copies may exist. Here's an example of his signature. 

Expertise your property

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