Abstraction, against all odds
Lucia Pesapane, art historian and curator (extract)

When Marie Raymond began a new series of abstract paintings in 1964, the artist was 56 years old; she would continue to paint, write and be active in the art world for another twenty years. While aware that artistic trends were shifting towards conceptual form and political engagement, she remained faithful to abstraction, which became a source of spiritual support for her, a path leading to the infinity of the cosmos. The cyclic nature of life and the need to raise her gaze to the heavens became pressing issues in 1962 when her son, Yves Klein, died suddenly at the age of 34, a tragedy followed by the birth of her grandson, Yves AMU Klein, a few months later. The abstract allowed her to distance herself from reality and draw it towards a higher sense of harmony. “What speaks to us in a painting is not the anecdote that it tells us, but the elusive game of life, ephemeral and real, always other, always new, eternal in itself.”1  Like other great artists before her, such as Hilma af Klint and Emma Kunz, her paintings represent a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas and investigations. (…)