Over the years, I have gone on discovering Wifredo Lam. He has been mentioned in different Blog chapters but always within permanent collections. I have to admit today that in the early years, I took one of his paintings for a Picasso….and seeing certain paintings of his today, it didn’t really surprise me. Especially as I learnt that he knew Picasso…This though was a retrospective of his work at the Beaubourg. Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) was a precursor of a cross-cultural style of painting, infusing Western modernism with African and Caribbean symbolism. He must have been one of the very rare artists who was in contact with all the movements of his time …and all those that I follow. Cubism, surrealism, CoBrA…but he never lost sight of the world around him and took on the struggle to paint the drama of his own country, Cuba. The above photo plunges us at once into the exhibition. Was he an attractive man? I think there are later photos which make him look less brutal….but in my book, ...
The other morning I sat down with endless cups of coffee and went through expo naute (an application on where and when, for art exhibitions) studying all that there was to see in France and Europe at the moment and coming up. I can’t tell you how frustrated I felt at the end of that episode. Only two exhibitions which I had not planned to go to - « From Matisse to the Blue Rider » and Giacometti’s drawings and water colors. In Zurich. There are exhibitions coming up in Marseille but not before the end of April and Zurich is not until next month either. I went through everything again and either found contemporary art and installations which perhaps at another period I would have been tempted to see - not now - impressionists, which don’t really enthuse me any longer even if the collection has never been shown before or late Renaissance or earlier. I know for a fact that I haven’t exhausted the periods I like so much and yet this year - or so far - there isn’t too much to loo...
Fautrier left me somehow puzzled. Why this time more than with other painters. Perhaps that his pallet was so varied and an artist which could not be identified so easily. The questions that came to mind. « Why am I so intrigued with abstract art? » « Why do so many of the realist artists and of no particular period, leave me indifferent? » That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t appreciate their work but most of the time, the paintings are reassuring and have an immediate identity. Many of my friends can’t understand my attraction to abstract work. « Squiggles. » « Paint splashed onto a canvas » Don’t know what I’m looking at »…and the comments go on. Perhaps that is why I am so attracted to abstract work. For me, there are so many hidden images and colours which intermingle giving way to space or sometimes crowded into a small space. They make me « study » a painting. Realism doesn’t. So what would it be now? Where had time gone? Da...
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