AN ARTIST, LITTLE KNOWN EVEN TODAY...
After Shirley Hicks, I was wondering what I would see next. I looked up the exhibitions on at the Modern Art Museum and hesitated. Jean Fautrier. I knew his work - rather I thought I knew his work - liked it, but would I learn anything new? Then something caught my eye. This exhibition which is to be one of the largest of his retrospectives. (Once again, I get sick of those statements.) But this was to include some 200 works – close to 160 paintings, drawings and prints, and a substantial group of sculptures – from numerous public and private collections in France and abroad. The Musée d’Art Moderne now has the largest Fautrier collection of any museum. Perhaps I would see a lot that I didn’t know. He was a solitary figure but today considered to be the precursor of Informal art in 1928 and a major contributor to the renewal of modern art after cubism. That I certainly did not know. Another point too. Jean Fautrier is intimately connected to the history of the M...