Jacques Grinberg, Michel Macréau, Maryan, Marcel Pouget: Revisiting Some Artists of the “Nouvelle Figuration”
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Jacques Grinberg, Michel Macréau, Maryan, Marcel Pouget: revisiting some artists of the “Nouvelle Figuration” 20 November 2014 - 24 January 2015 Opening on Thursday 20 November from 6 p.m. Marcel Pouget, Maryan, Jacques Grinberg, and Michel Macréau: Polad-Hardouin gallery invites you to re-discover these four emblematic painters of the “Nouvelle Figuration” (“New Figuration”). Painting, drawing, gouache, serigraphy: their media are as manifold as the graphic universes they inhabit. And yet, a common vibration radiates from their works: the omnipresence of humanity, and a fierce will to translate its most ardent and vibrant features, but also its darkest and most tragic meanders. These artists fear neither the grotesque nor caricatures to express the world that haunts them. Readily transcending the temporal framework of the 1960s, the exhibition begins with a masterpiece by Marcel Pouget, La Salle de récréation de l’hôpital psychiatrique (1978), and with some of his pastel drawings. Through flashy and contrasting colours, luminous and multi-coloured haloes, and white-ringed figures, the self-proclaimed “psycho-painter” produced hallucinatory visions that epitomise the psyche of his subjects. The exhibition continues under the glass roof with oil paintings and gouaches by Jacques Grinberg. His symbolic portraits, characterised by a rigorous geometry dominated by red and black colours, such as Le Mangeur de cochon, or later his Tasse de café (1996), testify to the persistence of New Figuration up to the wake of the 21st century. Michel Macréau, whose thought-provoking universe unfolds through an unmediated, exuberant and spontaneous style, will be present with graphic works and paintings such as his humorous tribute to Mondrian. The collision of figures, graphic elements, and writing imposes an unprecedented rhythm, ahead of its time. Finally, Maryan will occupy space no. 2 with a painting from the end of the 1950s, several pastel drawings, and black-and-white works of serigraphy, where we find the characters of an acerbic Carnival, wearing masks and insignia of power to exorcise suffering, humiliation, and death. These works, executed during the artist’s stay in New York, are exhibited for the first time at the gallery. The expression “Nouvelle Figuration” (“New Figuration”) first appeared in 1950 in a text by painter Jean-Michel Atlan. Eleven years later, it was taken over by art critics Jean-Luc Ferrier and Michel Ragon on the occasion of two exhibitions in Paris titled Une Nouvelle figuration I&II at the gallery Mathias Fels. At the time, in a French context dominated by abstraction, painters coming from expressionist movements and from COBRA and who no longer identified with traditional figuration, invented a third way. Through the dynamic and lyrical power of abstraction, they overcame the divide with representation by proposing a fanciful universe, filled with black humour, a poetic theatre of anxiety and cruelty. The works of Maryan and Marcel Pouget were exhibited alongside those of Asger Jorn, Francis Bacon, Paul Rebeyrolle, Bengt Lindström, and Enrico Baj. Although Michel Macréau and Jacques Grinberg (the youngest of the four) did not take part in any seminal exhibition of the movement, they are nevertheless connected to it by their acquaintances and by their common attempt to rethink figuration. The links between this movement and the gallery Polad-Hardouin are manifold and deep-set: New Figuration artworks ARE an important part of the collection of Cérès Franco, who played a unifying role within the movement and in particular among these four artists. Her daughter, Dominique Polad-Hardouin, naturally became imbued with their aesthetics and exhibited the artists who, a few generations later, followed the path of this movement. In 2008, the collective exhibition “Nouvelle Figuration: acte III”, organised at the gallery, added a third episode to the two organised at the gallery Mathias Fels, and highlighted an artistic movement that managed to last, despite its lack of cohesion and visibility, and to influence young contemporary painters. Galerie Polad-Hardouin - 86 rue Quincampoix 75003 Paris Tuesday to Saturday from 11 am to 6 pm Exhibition from 20 November 2014 to 24 January 2015 Opening on Thursday 20 November from 6 p.m. Annual closing from 20 December 2014 to 6 January 2015 www.polad-hardouin.com Press contact: Sophie Gaudez Mobile : 06 62 48 80 68 – Email : [email protected] JACQUES GRINBERG (BULGARIA, 1941-2011) Jacques Grinberg was born in 1941 in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he lived until the age of 13 before moving to Israel with his family. After studying at the Avni Art Institute in Tel Aviv (1957-1960), he chose to move to Paris, in a small colony of artists in rue d’Alésia, and started hanging out in Montparnasse. At the time, the art scene was in full swing: it was the beginning of New Figuration, with artists such as Pouget, Maryan, Christoforou, Arroyo, Segui… Grinberg’s well-established reputation as a painter allowed him to easily fit in, in particular at painting salons. In 1964, he entered the gallery André Schoeller (junior). After the gallery closed, he took a step back for a few years… and expanded his range of inspirations. He integrated new influences such as the Kabbalah and Taoism, developing his pictorial research in multiple directions. He also presented his works in Belgium and in the United States. In the 1980s, Jacques Grinberg returned to Israel where he had numerous exhibitions; upon his return in Paris, between 1988 and 1994 his works were the object of four personal exhibitions organised by Cérès Franco – his friend for 20 years – at the gallery l’Œil de Bœuf. His last personal exhibition was organised by the gallery Idées d’artistes in 2002. Grinberg dedicated the last years of his life to creation, both in painting and writing. This indefatigable worker produced an impressive corpus of several thousand pieces, centred on the representation of what is human. MICHEL MACRÉAU (FRANCE, 1935-1995) After an unstable childhood and adolescence, at the end of the 1950s Michel Macréau decided to work on painting full-time. He attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, following classes under a fresco master, then studied ceramic in Vallauris. He illegally lived in castle in the Vallée de Chevreuse, where he struggled with great financial difficulties. This is when, in 1960, he met Cérès Franco. The discovery of his unprecedented pictorial language produced a strong aesthetic shock in the young art critic and curator. She presented the works of Michel Macréau on numerous occasions. In 1962, gallery owner Raymond Cordier organised an exhibition about him. Macréau also had exhibitions in Germany and Japan. Today, his works are included in major public collections (Fonds national d’art contemporain, the Museum of Rio de Janeiro, Collection de l’art brut in Lausanne). With his spontaneity close to urban graffiti, Michel Macréau is readily provocative and develops a sprawling universe where he stages very personal sketches. His direct and proliferating style is both appealing and off-putting. He associates on the same level figures, graphic elements, and writing and imposes unprecedented rhythm and spontaneity to his works. By directly squeezing the tubes of paints on the canvas or paper, he explores as a precursor a multitude of supports (cardboard, fabric, wood, bed sheets...). Macréau anticipates by 20 years artists such as Penck, Combas or Basquiat. MARYAN (PINCHAS BURSTEIN. POLOGNE, 1927-1977) Maryan’s short life was riddled with tragedy. Born in 1927 in Nowy Sacz, Poland, Maryan spent his teenage years between ghettos and labour camps, survived an execution and knew the hell of concentration camps. Disabled and the only survivor of his family, he moved to Jerusalem in 1947 and attended the Art School Bezalel. Three years later, he moved to Paris and attended lithography classes in Fernand Léger’s workshop at the École des Beaux-Arts. He was exhibited at the gallery Breteau in 1952, then at the Galerie de France in 1956. He also took part in numerous shows and collective exhibitions, in particular at the “Salon des surindépendants”. During that Parisian period, he met and married Annette Minna Sonnenbluek, and became friends with the photographer Izis as well as with the painters Jean-Michel Atlan and Roger-Edgar Gillet. In 1961 and 1962, he took part in the exhibitions “Une nouvelle figuration I & II” at the gallery Mathias Fels & Cie. Still in 1962, despite his prominent role in the emergence of New Figuration, he grew tired of the Parisian art world and moved to New York, where he became a U.S. citizen. This period corresponds to an artistic phase characterised by great activity and freedom both in painting and drawing, but also by great physical and mental fragility. He suddenly died at the Chelsea Hotel in 1977. Maryan is considered as a father of New Figuration. First drawing inspiration from Picasso, Léger, and Jean-Michel Atlan, his paintings from the 1950s were on the verge between abstraction and figuration. In the 1960s, they tended towards a form of expressionist and symbolic abstraction, where solitary figures, incarnations of a blind and absurd power, are represented with devastating derision. This year, the Paris Museum of Jewish Art and History devoted a monographic exhibition to him. MARCEL POUGET (ALGERIE, 1923-1985) Born in Oran in 1923, Marcel Pouget attends the École des Beaux-Arts of that same city. He moved to Paris in 1947, where his work was promoted, among others, by the galleries Breteau, Ariel, Spiebel Barrero, and Claude Bernard. One of his major exhibitions, “Lumière et ténèbres”, was at Cérès Franco’s gallery l’Œil de Bœuf in 1984. His works are included in numerous international collections: Fondation Veranneman (Belgium), Museums of Tel Aviv (Israel), Vienna (Austria), the Centre Georges Pompidou and FNAC in Paris.