Georges MATHIEU (1921 - 2012)

Lot 27
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Estimation :
80000 - 120000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 110 500EUR
Georges MATHIEU (1921 - 2012)
Quanta Mina, 1976 Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, titled on reverse 60.3 x 72.8 cm 23 47/64 x 28 21/32 in. Georges Mathieu was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1921 and studied law and philosophy. He turned to oil painting in 1942. In the aftermath of the Second World War, pictorial art was reborn and transformed. In 1947, the art critic, Jean José Marchant, said that the works of Georges Mathieu evoked "lyrical abstraction", a notion evoked for the very first time. The artist opposes geometric abstraction, freeing himself from classical constraints. The great speed of his gestures in painting translates into a strong emotion, in the absence of an exact representation of reality. The forms are clear and precise. In 1957, Georges Mathieu spent a few months in Japan and discovered its aesthetic and pictorial traditions with deep interest. The art of great Asian calligraphy attracted his attention. Georges Mathieu was inspired by this aesthetic, but used the beauty and poetry of the gesture for different purposes. The artist builds his compositions from abstract signs, which he strips of meaning to explain that the meaning comes from a mental reconstruction made by the reader and not the sign itself. It is for this reason, the negation of the sign as a signifier, that André Malraux will describe the artist as a "Western calligrapher", an expression that will be widely used. From 1954 Georges Mathieu increased his production, participating in particular in happenings and performances. A prolific artist, his happenings highlighted his speed of execution. According to him, the artist would have three roles in society: the creation of forms, the creation of a style and finally, a moral role. Pioneer in his art, Mathieu is as much a theorist as an artist. He schematizes the cycle of renewal of the pictorial movements, by positioning the Lyric Abstraction as its last stage. The work presented here was painted by Georges Mathieu in 1976. While the artist was already expanding his palette, the vivacity of the line explodes on a bright red background, paying homage to the expressiveness of the calligraphy that is dear to him. Scratched with yellow and crossed with blue, the canvas takes up the codes of a language already perfectly mastered by the artist. The contrast of the black line imposes a sustained rhythm on the composition, whose tension lies in the accumulation of brushstrokes in the center left of the canvas. The freedom of Georges Mathieu's brush seems to explode into a yellow crown with a rigid line, which springs from the center of the composition. “Prodigious adventure to decide to oppose the world, the world of forms, the world of habits and behaviors. The success is due to patience, will, luck and of course the gift; not only the one of "knowing how to paint", but the one of a certain "foreseeing".” – Georges Mathieu
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