stopped painting until 1974 to devote himself to activism. He worked in a printshop on rotary presses, and in that way, he’d been faithful to our commitments from 1968.”11 Their political complicity reap-peared in a concrete way, namely in Buraglio’s down-to-earth creative processes of reusing and recycling, as well as in his predilection for printed matter and activities linked to the book trade. In their col-laborative work, Seydoux describes himself as “witness and actor”. Buraglio could have said the same thing, since the active presence of one stimulated the activity of the other whenever they met. Seydoux began making prints on wood, glass and fabric, accepting unexpected events just as he accepted destroying that which neither of them had expected, because that was how he could apprehend and embrace the artist’s world. In Buraglio’s words, it was a way of “breaking up good printmaking which holds you back, by doing what you’re not sup-posed to do.”12

The Seydoux style can be described as unspoken elegance, a manner of accompanying someone while risking your own competency. One word, one choice sums up this attitude which, once again, constitutes an ethic: L’Atelier. Chosen by Éric Seydoux to designate his home as a printer-publisher, the name resonates with the echo of the agora of the Fine Arts School. It’s not a proper name, as so many other workshops are given, but a beautiful word, atelier, or workshop, which refers to artists and printers alike, and which designates above all a place where a community is at work, each person respecting their position, inventing a common way of doing things under the banner of innovation and open to whatever lies ahead. As Éric Seydoux, who knew how to maintain his nonchalant style even when assessing his own work would have said: “It’s not bad…”

Pierre Wat, February 2025

Art Historian, Professor at the University Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne