Ernest Pignon-Ernest was born in Nice in 1942. He is from Nice and he lives and works in Paris. For nearly fifty years he has been putting pictures on the walls of cities. He studied in his hometown and worked primarily for architecture. At a very young age, he regularly exhibits his works in solo exhibitions. Very quickly, the artist is interested in the city and realizes, over time, many urban interventions that give it its notoriety.

Since 1966, Ernest Pignon-Ernest has created ephemeral images on the walls of major cities, which echo the events that took place there. Sensitive to injustices, it deals with topics such as abortion (Tours, Nice, Paris, 1975), expelled (Paris, 1979), AIDS (Soweto, 2002) SOURCE WIKIP, or even apartheid with "Artists of the world against apartheid "

Always wanting to open the eye of the one who looks on misery, poverty, immigration, racism, the epidemic (South Africa again in 2001-2002, AIDS). His art, ephemeral often, makes

(Pignon-Ernest sign up for, he chooses a city, out of defiance or by necessity, immerse yourself in all aspect (drawing, photography, walking, etc.), he go even immerse yourself in the history and the legendaries of it. It will be the event at Nice in 1974 on the occasion of a twinning that reject, “Rimbaud” in 1978, it will be Naples in 1988 that to him gave his abrupt bright and his obstinate past, Soweto, his engagement versus apartheid; he founders “Artistes of world versus the apartheid” with Antonio Saura and Jacques Derrida.

Out of channels merchant, Pignon-Ernest sticks immenses silkscreens printing on walls of cities in which he intervene or in the phones boxes of Paris because “they are settings when reflete the cities ”. Fascinate for the first movements of the prehistorics humans, he realised ”Les Arbrorigènes” in 1984.

The artist like make on the paper the celebrity portraits of musicians, novelist or poet. Pignon-Ernest pay homage!)

Committed politically and socially, Ernest Pignon-Ernest develops an art that seeks to upset mentalities, to open minds to the reality of the world. As dark as it is. In the 1970s, with his first works, he denounced the Algerian war, apartheid in South Africa, the situation of immigrants in Europe… All these events that count thousands of victims to whom it allows to emerge from oblivion and to emerge from silence through street art.

In 1974, among other things, the artist denounced a decision by the municipal council of his city, Nice, that of a twinning with the city of Cape Town in South Africa, then capital of institutionalized racism. Ernest Pignon-Ernest has pasted in the city hundreds of images of a black family parked behind barbed wire