New York, NY - Jean Miotte was born in 1926. He came of artistic age in war torn Europe in the decade after World War II, when non-figurative, gestural abstraction was emerging on both sides of the Atlantic as the dominant language in contemporary art. The embrace of abstraction was not simply a formal issue: it was literally a change in the realm of meaning and value. With social and political institutions discredited as enablers of nothing but chaos, the artist as creator and painting, by and in itself, now seemed more potent, more capable of moral meaning than the external realities of landscape, politics and society. On view through 30 December, 2009.

Seeking what has been termed art autre, artists such as Shiraga Kasuo, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Emil Shumacher and Miotte championed the individual freedom of the artist as expressed through gestural brushstrokes and thick pools of color. As Miotte has commented, “My painting is a projection, a succession of acute moments where creation occurs in the midst of spiritual tension and as a result of inner conflicts.”

Miotte’s artistic influences include performance, choreography, jazz music and Ballet, and of these his most seminal influence is Ballet. In London in 1948 he did set design and saw the work of Balanchine, the Diaghilev Ballet and Margot Fonteyn. Being exposed to this variety of art was of profound inspiration to him. Dance is the universal language of non-verbal communication, evident through performance. Miotte would experiment with gesture through painting and hone lyrical movement in his own art. Gestural painting can evoke the hand of the Samurai or the surgeon, but Miotte’s lithe, inventive line echoes the living art of dance. When painting, he becomes a Zen archer, choreographing each stroke. His canvas is a stage where paint leaps, and where drips refuse gravity. Miotte experiments in media ranging from oil to acrylic, gouache, ink, etching, lithography, and collage. His use of black paint on a white or raw surface is a theme which frequently recalls calligraphy; when color appears, it ranges from primaries to earthy tones. Critics say he is unique among the Informels because he continues to grow, fighting repetition, questioning himself and his form of expression. In the 1990s he began producing the canvases currently on display, the largest of his career.

As a painter, Jean Miotte has definitely crossed boarders in a geographical sense, with his life in Europe and America, and wide acceptance in Asia. He paints from within, reaching untouched emotions. Because his art emerges from within, it brings out his spectator’s inner feelings. Miotte has succeeded in touching profoundly a worldwide audience, and because of this we confidently say he is universal.

The Chelsea Art Museum is the home of the Miotte Foundation, dedicated to archiving and conserving the oeuvre of Jean Miotte and providing new scholarship and research on L’Informel. Miotte’s extensive collected works are preserved as a legacy for New York, where he has had a studio in SoHo since 1978.

Visit The Chesea Art Museum / 556 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011 / http://www.chelseaartmuseum.org/