Hervé Laplace, contemporary collagist with multiple identities
Why did Hervé Laplace choose to express himself artistically through fictional characters? He loved telling stories and dreamed of making films. Collage allowed him to escape to distant horizons, free his imagination and break down reality.
Collage, an art recognized
The artistic technique of collage involves assembling different elements (pieces of newspaper, photos, drawings, various materials) on a surface to create an original composition. The collagist reorganizes to tell strange, poetic stories.
Collage became an art form in its own right at the beginning of the 20th century, notably thanks to Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who used it as part of cubism. Later, Dadaism, Surrealism and Pop Art explored the technique in depth. Max Ernst (1891-1976), a pioneer of Dadaism and a key artist of Surrealism, is also known for his collages. Like Jacques Prévert‘s collages, Max Ernst’s inspired Hervé Laplace.
Collage allowed Hervé Laplace to soar to distant horizons, free his imagination and deconstruct reality. He used this technique to create meaning through contrast, humor, social or political criticism – dimensions he was particularly fond of but, because of his natural discretion, rarely expressed in his everyday life.
Time in pieces by Hervé Laplace
Hervé Laplace chose to create two fictional characters of collage artists according to the period of the antique documents he used: René Apallec for the period from the late 19th to the 30s, and Herbôt Laplace for the period from the 50s to the 60s.
With René Apallec, Hervé Laplace expressed his need for recognition, to be an artist who marked his time. In a playful move, he invented a major collage artist with his own history and works: as Max Ernst’s eldest child, he could only have inspired him! René Apallec thus finds himself the bearer of an indisputable legitimacy, a legitimacy that Hervé Laplace had difficulty asserting despite his immense artistic qualities recognized by his peers and by art-lovers and collectors alike.
With Herbôt Laplace, Hervé Laplace has created a character closer to himself historically and in his humor, like a member of his family whose surname he shares. With Herbôt Laplace, he evolves towards our contemporary and less masked than when he was René Apallec.
Breaking with discretion and living adventurous dreams
A child of Le Havre, like Raoul Dufy, Jean Dubuffet and Pierre of the duo Pierre et Gilles, Hervé Laplace has always contemplated the distant horizon and boats. Yet in real life, Hervé Laplace travels very little.
Two trips have particularly impressed him, each time to present the works of René Apallec:
His Gueules Cassées first took him to London at RAMM in 2015 to exhibit alongside Otto Dix.
In 2019, he’s off to Martinique for commemorations in honor of Basse-Pointe-born surgeon Hippolyte Morestin [1869-1919]. Hippolyte Morestin was an important figure in the medical world during the Belle-Époque. As a surgeon, he treated thousands of soldiers with serious skull and facial injuries during the First World War, becoming a master of maxillofacial surgery and one of the founding fathers of cosmetic surgery. Hervé Laplace came to Morne-Rouge to exhibit alongside sculptor Thomas Waroquier and to run master classes for CM1 and CM2 pupils.
Read also : René Apallec, an artist facing World War I
On several occasions, he exhibited for “Face à la matière” with the Fondation des Gueules Cassées and for congresses of the Société Française de Stomatologie Chirurgie Maxillo faciale et chirurgie orale.
Suddenly deceased three days before the Spring Fantasy in Paris (March 20-30, 25), which featured works by both Herbôt and René Apallec, Hervé Laplace was an artist whom Artistes Actuels had represented for two years. He has participated in four of the gallery’s Paris exhibitions. He will be represented again in July at the “Artistes au Manoir” exhibition in Pont-l’Évêque from July 12 to 27, 2025.
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