DIE GALERIE is pleased to announce its fourth participation at BRAFA Art Fair with the presentation of three main points of the gallery program: highlights of the Modern Masters André Masson, Max Ernst, Roberto Matta and Jean Dubuffet, a high quality collection of paintings and works on paper by CoBrA artists as well as a solo presentation of the French contemporary painter and sculptor Alain Clément (*1941).
Roberto Matta: Over the past years the Chilean Surrealist Roberto Matta (1911-2002), whose futuristic-somnambulistic visualizations look more contemporary than ever, has been honored with numerous notable exhibitions including, among others, one at the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany. In the Americas, the artist is esteemed as one of the seminal painters of the 20th century. Progressing from his anthropomorphic drawings, Matta evolved a unique style of painting which, as of 1938, was to become emblematic for him. His innovative technique of applying paint with a sponge and subsequently fleshing out the inadvertent structural progressions was to become the technical basis of numerous artists of the subsequent generations. Most importantly, it became a key inspiration for the artists of Abstract Expressionism, including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Matta's artistic investigation of the rapid advances in science and his open political and philosophical position led to increasingly complex, large-format and epically expansive compositions that effectively envelop the viewer. His imagery could well have inspired the science-fiction computer games of today and even now the radiant tonal progressions of the applied paint still proffer a richly portent futuristic realm.
CoBrA: Despite the brief period of its existence (1948 - 1951), the artist group CoBrA is seen as one of the major catalysts in the development of European art after 1945. The pool of artists, sculptors and poets and their concepts of art and society are still viewed today as the dawning of a new era. Founded in 1948 in Paris by the Danish Asger Jorn, the Dutch Karel Appel, Corneille, Jacques Constant and the Belgian Christian Dotremont and Joseph Noiret, this European phenomenon grew to include a new generation of artists consisting of over 50 participants from 12 different nations. The name, CoBrA, represents the hometowns of the founding members: Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. The artists worked together to develop a new pictorial language free of all academic conventions. The key inspirational sources of their visual principles were the art of indigenous cultures, Norse mythology, the impartial simplicity of children's drawings, and the visual means of folklore. The artists revitalized Expressionism and rejected the then-dominating influence of Surrealism so as to reconcile abstraction with figuration in their works. CoBrA remains emblematic for both the intuitive and the spontaneous in art as well as the rejection of pervading concepts of aesthetics. For the very first time DIE GALERIE will show the brand new painting Rue des Émeraudes by Pierre Alechinsky, the last still alive and agilely working painter of CoBrA. In 2017 he celebrated his 90th birthday in Bougival, close to Paris. In addition, Carl-Henning Pedersen and Lucebert will be on display whose artistic roots are found in poetry. The autodidactic artist Carl-Henning Pedersen (1913-2007) came to painting by way of the poems he wrote about his first wife, the painter Else Alfelt. In 1949, he and Lucebert (1924-1994) met at the first exhibition of the CoBrA group in Amsterdam, where Lucebert was represented with an illustrated poem. Lucebert subsequently also took up painting as an autodidact, processing his World War Two experiences in the form of grotesque, ironic, animal-like creatures and ghostly faces. Pedersen's work, on the other side seems unaffected by the traumata, forever emanating a colorfully positive and life-affirming aura. The fairy-tale creatures populating his work narrate the mythology of the North with an effervescently light heart. Long after the CoBrA group ceased to exist, the trailblazing impulses of the artist group continued to be felt in the European art history of the 20th century and beyond – many of its members have – enjoyed lifelong artistic success and international recognition. On the occasion of BRAFA 2018, DIE GALERIE is honoring this exciting period with a large presentation. Early works of its leading members from the 1950s and 1960s are presented as well as later created paintings and paper works that illustrate their further artistic development and vita.
Alain Clément: The French painter and sculptor Alain Clément (b. 1941) is influenced by the shimmering interplay of the light and color of the nature of his hometown of Nîmes, where, in addition to Paris and Berlin, he lives and works. Clément, the former director of the École des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes, strives to merge color and light into a single, indissoluble unity in his paintings, the subtle transparency and brilliance of which are both charismatic and captivating. To achieve a harmonization of forms in his work, Clément employs both strict, geometrical elements as well as broad, curved bands of color that seem to glide across the pictorial surface. Since 1998 Alain Clément transposes his painterly philosophy also into spatial form and creates monochrome, color-intensive steel reliefs and sculptures that stand in close dialogue with his paintings. DIE GALERIE is presenting Alain Clément at BRAFA 2018 with a large solo presentation with paintings, reliefs and sculptures executed between 1995 and 2017.
