Waterhouse & Dodd to Present a Major George Folmer Retrospective

Written by Lewis Mallory Saturday, 14 January 2012 01:42

New York City.- Waterhouse & Dodd are pleased to present a major retrospective of the innovative French abstract artist, Georges Folmer. The exhibition is entitled simply "Φ", the Greek letter ‘Phi’ that lies at the heart of much of Folmer’s work from the 1930s onwards: it is the symbol of The Golden Ratio, the ancient mathematical and geometrical theory upon which most of his works are constructed; it signifies the philosophy of balance in all things, in life and art; and it is the character that Folmer used to sign many of his works. The exhibition opens at Waterhouse & Dodd’s gallery at 104 Greene Street in SoHo on Thursday 19th January 2012 and continues until 15th February. Selected works will tour to TEFAF Maastricht in March 2012 and to Waterhouse & Dodd’s London gallery at 16 Savile Row in April.

This will be the largest collection of Folmer’s works ever seen outside a museum, and although this this is the first exhibition of Folmer’s work in the USA, since his death there have been six museum shows devoted to his work. As well as paintings the exhibition will include a number of 3-dimensional works, including the artist’s historically important polychromatic constructions, among the earliest ever made, and his unique ‘Roto-peintures’ and ‘Tableaux-grilles’ with rotating and movable panels. Jonathan Dodd sees this as “a unique opportunity for New Yorkers to rediscover one of the greats of abstract art, an intensely serious artist of enormous intellect and unique vision. For 35 years these works have been hidden away by the artist’s daughter, released only for museum shows. And here they are bursting free, in a riot of shape and colour, purely abstract work unencumbered by the natural world and existing in a higher realm of geometry and poetry.”

Georges Folmer was born in 1895 in Nancy. At the age of 15, he enrolled at the Art School of his native town where he studied painting, sculpture and architecture for the next three years. At the outbreak of war he happened to be in Germany, where he was interned. He put his enforced idleness to good use by painting the scenery for a small theatre organised by the prisoners, who included well-known artists such as Etievant and Lucien Nat, the future star of the Baty theatre. After that, Folmer was sent as a prisoner on parole to Geneva, where he quickly became a student at the Art School. He spent a year there before the hazards of war took him to Algeria. Delighting in the light he found there, he discovered the colours which he used in his paintings during his travels in both Algeria and Tunisia. Once the war was over, he decided against returning to Nancy and settled instead in Paris in 1919, where he became a regular exhibitor at, and then a member of, the Salons des Indépendants d'automne and at the Tuileries. In order to earn his living, the artist's eternal problem, he worked in various professions connected with art. This included designing the theatrical costumes for the actor Dullin at the Ibels workshop. This gave him the opportunity to frequent literary and modern art circles, and in 1926 he met Del Marle for the first time, along with members of the Vouloir group, including Lempereur-Haut, who was to become a loyal friend. He continued with his painting whilst at the same time doing wood engraving and enamel work. Critics at the time remarked on his new style - "solidity in construction" and "colourful cadence" - which was his first move towards Cubism: "Thanks be to the Billiet-Vorms Gallery for having revealed the new Georges Folmer to us". From the Thirties onwards and without abandoning his Cubist vision, he studied the influence of Cubism in comparison with the first attempts at abstract art. In 1932, he met Herbin and was attracted by the young "Abstraction-Creation" movement. He continued developing his studies and his practical and technical research work on the Section d’Or and on the harmonic division of space, split up into different planes. In 1935, he exhibited at the first Salon d'Art mural alongside Delaunay, Gleizes and Wassily Kandinsky. From then on, he totally expressed "non-imitative plastic art", according to Del Marle's definition. In 1939 his work was shown together with that of Frédo-Sides at the Galerie Charpentier at the still-famous event which included all the non-representational artists of the time. This event was the precursor of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles which opened in 1946 after the war. Georges Folmer exhibited there regularly until 1972 and from 1947 onwards he showed his spatial constructions and his paintings on canvas. Before that, in 1942, he had created a new technique for his drawings, which he called "Monotypes", involving the superimposing of various printing inks applied with rollers or tools he devised himself. In 1949 at the Café du Globe he, Gorin, Servanes and Beothy were among the first nine artists who, at Del Marle's initiative, made preparations for forming what was to become the Groupe Espace, whose famous manifesto he signed in 1952.

In the 1950s his art blossomed: individual exhibitions at Colette Allendy's where he showed his sculptures in polychromatic wood. At the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles under the aegis of Auguste Herbin, he developed constructivist representation and became responsible for the "geometric section". In 1956, he was appointed Secretary-General of the Salon, which prompted Michel Seuphor to comment in "L'Oeil" in October 1959, "he's a tenacious constructor", "one of the moral pillars of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles". In 1960 he founded the Mesure Groupe, of which he was the President and Gorin the Vice-President. This group, devoted to experimenting with formal plastic research, wanted the ideas of architects and plastic artists, painters and sculptors of exclusively geometric designs, to be brought together into a close dialogue. In this spirit, the Groupe Mesure continued its work with the Cercle culturel de l'abbaye de Royaumont - the Gouin-Lang foundation, and with the Association française des coloristes conseils (AFCC). The Groupe Mesure held exhibitions in France and Germany until 1965. At the same time, Georges Folmer developed his plastic experiments still further and constructed his "roto-paintings": these were pictures brought to life by a polychromatic relief giving the feeling of movement on an abstract plane. These pictures represented the very essence of the transformable work, the humanity of which reveals the vast possibilities offered to movement. His "roto-paintings", and subsequently his mobile sculptures, translated his own expression into kinetic art. As R.V. Gindertael wrote in his preface to the individual exhibition held in 1966 at the Galerie Cazenave, Folmer created "contemporary art of monumental character that is perfectly in tune with the boldest trends of a forward-looking architecture".


He continued taking part in several group exhibitions, including one which he organised together with Denise René at the Centre Culturel of the city of Toulouse in 1967. In 1968 he retired to the banks of the Rhine where he went back to working on the monotypes, which he exhibited at the Galerie Landwerlin in Strasbourg in 1969. In his last years in Strasbourg he led a solitary life, devoting himself to writing his reflections on art. Before his death in January 1977, he made his last journey to Paris in June 1972 on the occasion of his Jubilee, which was organised for him by the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles.

Ray Waterouse and Jonathan started working together in 1982 and formed Waterhouse & Dodd  five years later. In 1989 they opened a first-floor gallery in Bond Street and in 2001 moved nearby to 26 Cork Street. Their gallery at Cork Street is now dedicated to a program of contemporary art exhibitions, whilst their Impressionist and Modern art has recently relocated to new premises at 16 Savile Row. Waterhouse & Dodd are also proud to announce the opening of their first gallery outside the UK, at Greene Street in the heart of New York's Soho district. The gallery will exhibit international contemporary art. Eleanor Cheetham has joined the company as gallery manager in New York. For more than 25 years Waterhouse and Dodd have dealt in paintings from the late 19th and 20th centuries, combining great paintings by both major and minor artists. During the 1990s they increasingly offered professional advice to collectors, a service that became formalised into one of the most respected art advisory services in the world, Fine Art Brokers. In 2008 they curated ArtRoutes, a major show of contemporary Middle Eastern and Arab Art that was the first in a series of such annual exhibitions. As well as publishing up to ten catalogues a year, their newsletter The Fine Art File is now up to issue 36. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.waterhousedodd.com

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