MAMAC Presents Figurative Works From its Collection

Written by Angelique Reynard Tuesday, 29 November 2011 22:33

Nice, France.- The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art ( MAMAC ) of the City of Nice is pleased to present a new exhibition at the Gallery Ponchettes, a selection from its collection on the theme of "Figuration Free of the Figure". The exhibition is on view through January 15th 2012. Figuration was the main motivation of many artists in the 1980s. Artists including Jean-Michel Alberola , Jean-Charles Blais , Rémi Blanchard , François Boisrond , Robert Combas and Hervé Di Rosa , addressed topics related to comics, graffiti and street slogans, in an ironic and deliberately naive fashion. This exhibition present works by these artists as well as Denis Castellas, Luciano Castelli, Keith Haring , Antonio Recalcati, Gerald Thupinier and Vladimir Velickovic , all exploring the theme of the figure in the collections of MAMAC.

In the early 1980's, France saw a revival of figurative painting. It is in this context that the "Figuration Libre" style developed, named by Ben, and made famous by the critic Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, it temporarily brought together several young artists. Jean-Michel Alberola, Jean-Charles Blais, Remi Blanchard, François Boisrond, Combas, Hervé Di Rosa, claimed a total spontaneity of expression associated with a formal simplicity, and a painting of sensation, in opposition to any historical or artistic heritage. Borrowing their iconography and composition from comics, the imagination of the children's press, and the aesthetics of the media and the modern world, their works reflected through an expression of everyday life, the immediacy of urban culture. The work of Jean-Michel Alberola was first built around large figurative paintings and pastels before mixing quotes, photographs, films and reflections on the problems of art, such as in "The night of Aziyadée" 1981. Jean-Charles Blais created great figures painted on found materials, mostly on the back of posters, characters which gradually invaded the whole of the free surface, folding to the shape of its contours and thus evacuating any possibility of narration, "El papel del tiger (the Paper Tiger)" from 1982 is a good example of this style. Francois Boisrond divided his paintings into a series of plans juxtaposed or superimposed, reflecting a everydayness of biographical events are defined by their repetition work. Combas worked from stereotypes, his characters grounded in popular imagination and folklore, combined with a fancy calligraphy.


Text is also essential for Hervé Di Rosa, he participated in the creation of a fictional universe in which the audience can project themselves. Figuration free approaches by borrowing the forms of "subcultures" such as American Graffiti, is shown in the works of Keith Haring, a prominent figure in the New York School during the 1980s, he developed stylized images, silhouettes of little people or animals that became bright and colorful logos representing the period.

The Gallery Ponchettes was built between 1830-35, and was the first nucleus of what was to become the famous "Promenade des Anglais". In Nice, li pouncheta means small peaks, referring to small rocky points that dotted the foot of the promontory of the Castle. In 1950, the gates were walled up, transforming the space into an exhibition gallery. It was inaugurated under the patronage of Jean Medecin (1890-1965), Mayor of Nice, and the painter Henri Matisse, whose retrospective launched the new gallery space. Gallery pnchettes was the first step towards creating a modern art museum in Nice. Supported by the painters Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse and the Mediterranean Union for Modern Art (umami) the gallery exhibited all the great modern masters, including Bonnard, Matisse, Marc Chagall , Jean Cocteau , Raoul Dufy , Kees Van Dongen and many others. With the inauguration of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in June 1990, the Hall of Ponchettes became a place of permanent exhibition of works by Raoul Dufy and more general displays of works from the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.mamac-nice.org/

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~