Current exhibition
Francoise Morellet
29. 4. - 15. 9. 2011
I believe you know magnificently how to combine the ideal conditions which can awake the spectator’s genius.
there is no need to add anything to morellet, as to all those people who work with visions, it is enough to look and see and just now we have only an infinitely small part of his work, however i hope that it is sufficient to open and fill our minds.
our meetings with inseparable françois and danielle morellet, sometimes also with their children, with my loves and common friends continue almost half a century since the 1960s: villa in cholet and zagreb, paris, new york, venice, rome, milan, basel, kassel, gorinchem... big cities or small places which marked, at least in the early phase, the whole history of our investigations, our exhibitions from „arte programmata“ to „nove tendencije“, „art today“, „mouvement“, „documenta“, „weiss auf weiss“ and many others.
projet, 1954 angles droits concentiques, 1956
works in each part of the world while my creation has been subdued already for some time, however i think there is still mutual appreciation between us. he is always very busy, he has his work absolutely organized, everything is consistently planned also thanks to danielle who characterizes herself half as a joke and half seriously as „free-vol“, because she loves puns as the recent „senile lines“ which you can read in both directions. françois morellet has a big talent because he was able to foresee in advance what will be right with regard to personal relations, persons around him and his journey: he knew a lot of people, all continents and left traces in many towns and therefore it is right that bratislava which was the capital of the habsburg monarchy even sooner than vienna and which is today the capital of the young slovak republic, is going to receive him in this museum within our exhibitions of contemporary art and is going to present his characteristic though not very large exhibition beginning with „trames“ through „sphère-trames“, „grille se déformant“, „tube de néon“, „lignes au hazard“ up to the newest works as „cross crash“ and „jazz band“, which is a sample summarizing his work, at least in my perception, his long work of fine arts which has always been so fascinating.
getulio alviani 2010
grille se deforme, 1965 trames 0° 90°, 1971
1, prolongation d’une trame de parallèles ortogonales (indiquée sur lesol) sur des murs formant (avec ces parallèles) des angles de 30° 45°60° 90° et sur un mur en arc de cercle, 1981/82
2, angle droit composé d’une poutre coupé d’onglet (30° par rapport ausol – 45° par rapport au mur) et d’une ligne (45° par rapport au sol – 0°par rapport au mur) et une ligne (0° par rapport au sol et au mur), 1982
1, l’avalance, 2000
2,lunatique neonly – 16 quart de cercle n. 4, 2001
lunatique neonly – 16 quart de cercle n. 1, 2001
Francoise Morellet
Born in Cholet in 1926 François Morellet worked in his father's business between 1948 and 1975. He taught himself to paint but also took lessons from a painter.
His early landscapes, portraits and still lifes were executed in pastose brushwork in a subdued palette but they soon gave way to painting distinguished by stylized pictorial elements. By 1950 François Morellet was styling himself an 'abstract painter'. That year Morellet had his first one-man show at the Galerie Creuze in Paris. In the mid-1950s François Morellet was preoccupied with configuring the picture field as an infinite structure reaching beyond the confines of the picture itself. In so doing, François Morellet eliminated the all-over technique of a Jackson Pollock from his range since Morellet based each work on principles and systems established in advance. Morellet was in fact more interested in method than in the finished painting.
Morellet joined 'GRAV' ('Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel': 1960-1968), a group of Kinetic artists who explored the possibilities of the visual arts in a scientific and experimental way. Determined to find a new medium of expression, François Morellet used neon from 1963 as his material of choice. What interested Morellet in neon tubing was its specific material properties: its luminosity, the way it could be made to shut on and off automatically and the fact that it was manufactured.
From 1968 François Morellet became interested in architecture and space. He was given commissions for working in public spaces, including the Centre culturel in Compiegne, the La Défense section of Paris and the Kröller-Müller Museum Park in Otterlo. In 1992 François Morellet summed up his work himself in 'Relâche n° 1' by combining in it all the materials he had ever used: painted canvas, neon tubing, adhesive tape and strips of metal. Following aleatoric principles, Morellet allowed chance to transform his materials into an aesthetic disorder. His provocative stance and humor place Morellet closer to Dada than to Geometric Abstraction and Minimal art. François Morellet lives in Cholet and Paris.