Pierre Alechinsky

Pierre Alechinsky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pierre Alechinsky (October 19, 1927) is a Belgian artist. Lives and works in France from 1951
He was born in Brussels. In 1944 he attended the l'Ecole nationale supérieure d'Architecture et des Arts décoratifs de La Cambre, Brussels where he studied illustration techniques, printing and photography. In 1945 he discovered the work of Henri Michaux, Jean Dubuffet and developed a friendship with the art critic Jacques Putman. In 1949 he joined Christian Dotremont, Karel Appel and Asger Jorn to form the art group Cobra. He participated both with the Cobra exhibitions and went to Paris to study engraving at Atelier 17 under the guidance of a master, Stanley William Hayter in 1951. In 1954 he had his first exhibition in Paris and started to become interested in oriental calligraphy. During the early 1950s he became the Paris correspondent for the Japanese journal Bokubi (the joy of ink), then in 1955, encouraged by Henri Storck and Luc de Heusch, he left for Japan with Micky, his wife. He exhibited Night, 1952 (Ohara Museum, Kurashiki) and made a film: Japanese Calligraphy – Christian Dotremont would write the commentary with music by André Souris. His paintings are related to Tachisme, Abstract expressionism, and Lyrical Abstraction.
In the Porte Saint-Martin district, in a room so tiny he was unable to stand back from his work, he started his first large painting: TAlice Grows Up, 1961, oil on canvas, 205 x 245 cm, private collection © ADAGPhe Anthill, 1955 (Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York). Then, from 1958 under the protective wing of the Galerie de France, the large format pictures came easily; such as The Great Transparencies, 1959 (reference to André Breton) and Alice Grows Up, 1961 (reference to Lewis Carroll). Passing from abstraction, a moment explored, to a more freely descriptive image that moves from the face to the monster. The connection to James Ensor becomes apparent (Homage to James Ensor 1956), The Parable of the Blind Men 1958, Cloud in Trousers 1957 (SMAK, Ghent): the themes of propagation, swarming and finally that of opening.
By 1960 he had exhibited in London, Berne and at the Venice Biennial, and then in Pittsburgh, New York, Amsterdam and Silkeborg as his international reputation grew.
From 1961, he took frequent trips to New York where the Chinese painter Wallace Ting, whom he had met in Paris in the fifties, would introduce him to the possibilities of acrylic paint. Alechinsky was 37 in 1965 and it was crucial year: Central Park, the first acrylic painting with a central subject surrounded by “remarks in the margins”. Multiple consequences. The boundaries and borders theme. Indeed, Margin and Center, was the theme of a large one man show at the Guggenheim, New York in 1987. Progressively abandoning oil paint – which he explains in Lettre suit, Gallimard 1992 – for the versatility of his new medium, with which he no longer worked vertically but “in the Chinese style”, upon the floor.
He worked with Walasse Ting and continued to be close to Christian Dotremont. He also developed links with André Breton.
From 65 paper laid down on canvas became the tried and tested support for all the artist’s acrylic paintings. However, whilst looking for beautiful blank sheets of 17th, 18th and 19th century paper he would discover a large quantity of books covered in writings: which led to the inks and watercolours on these pages strewn with “pen strokes, numbers and letters”: school exercise books, letters, out of date invoices, worthless share certificates and geographical maps, military or aerial. A perfect background for the imagination of a “paintbrush explorer”. The brush, for example, that discovered by chance the signature of a Gille de Binche whose helmet of white feathers becomes a volcanic eruption, an ejaculation or cloud in the form of an exclamation mark. Imagery that results as much from deciphering as from the “black pupil” of the inkpot.
During the eighties, the disc, circle and concentric circles – reminiscent of Guillaume Apollinaire’s words astres and désastres [stars and disasters] – would become an obsession during strolls through the streets of New York, Arles, Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Brussels or Salzburg… With Indian ink Alechinsky appropriates prints from “pieces of urban furniture”: these metal grates covered with the anonymous imagery of the plate casters, “apertures and grids”, constitute a popular art that we pass by without really taking the time to appreciate its beauty.
His international career continued throughout the seventies and by 1983 he became Professor of painting at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. In 1994 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Free University of Brussels, and in 1995 one of his designs was used on a Belgian stamp.
Volcanoes and Terrils: the hill or mound theme for which Alechinsky found a variety of expressions. Through this shape and its mutations, Alechinsky delivers a conception of form that is bound to gesture. During a trip to Tenerife, he united the volcano or rather the flow of molten lava with the emblematic symbol of the serpent. The relationship between form and gesture fused and made each shape the result of a sudden eruption. Through this theme – omnipresent in his work since the sixties – Alechinsky’s oeuvre describes a reality whose central preoccupation is man’s relationship with the world!
His works are held in the collections of the Tate,[1] the Museum of Modern Art[2] and the Walker Art Center.[3]
Contents [hide]
1 External links
2 Biography
3 Bibliography
4 References
[edit]External links

Galerie Lelong, Paris
[edit]Biography

1944-1948: studies typography and book illustration at La Cambre, the national school of architecture and decorative arts, Brussels; he begins to paint on the side
1947: first individual exhibition, Galerie Lou Cosyn, Brussels
1949: participates in the CoBrA (Copenhagen-Brussels-Amsterdam) movement with Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Christian Dotremont, Asger Jorn ...; creates a center for research for CoBrA in the Ateliers du Marais : the common house in Brussels where Alechinsky, Olyff, Strebelle, de Heusch, Reinhoud ... work
1951: Dotremont and Jorn, hospitalized in Denmark, charge him with organizing the Second (and last) International Exhibition of Experimental Art of CoBrA at the Palais de Beaux-Arts in Liège. After this, he leaves Brussels and moves to Paris
1952: improves his engraving technique at the Atelier 17 beside Stanley William Hayter 1954: first individual exhibition in Paris, Galerie Nina Dausset
1955: leaves from Marseille for Yokohama, directs a film in Kyoto : Calligraphie japonaise
1958: collaborates on Daily-Bûl, La Louvière; joins the committee of directors of the Salon de Mai in Paris
1961: room of honor at Carnegie International of 1961 in Pittsburgh; first trip to New York, staying at the Chelsea Hotel, and then at the home of Walasse Ting, whom Alechinsky knew in the 50s in Paris
1962: until 1986, 18 shows at the Lefebre Gallery, New York
1964: installs his studio in Bougival (Yvelines)
1965: Central Park, his first painting "with noticeable margins," a method that he would develop; he imposes a drawing around a central subject; he gradually abandons oil painting for acrylic on paper on canvas
1966: André Breton chooses Central Park for L’Écart absolu, Eleventh [and final] International Exhibition of Surrealism, Paris
1968: Wins the Grand Prix Marzotto-Europe for painting, Valdagno
1969: retrospective at the Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels, which traveled to Denmark and Germany
1975: shows a decade´s worth of acrylic paintings at the Boymans-van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam and at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris
1976: Sept écritures, with Christian Dotremont, a mural decoration in a metro station in Brussels
1977: Andrew W. Mellon Prize for the whole of his work, arranged in a retrospective at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.
1979: joins the Galerie Maeght in Paris, which would become Galerie Lelong
1980: retrospective at the Kestner Society, Hannover
1981: ‘A Print Retrospective' at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
1984: Professor at the French National School of Fine Arts, Paris – until 1987; Grand Prix National des Arts et Lettres, Paris
1985: decorates the waiting room of the Ministry of Culture, Paris
1986: Margin and Center, retrospective of paintings "with noticeable margins," The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
1987: installs a studio in Provence
1989: Fluctuations, allegorical painting for the Ministry of Finances, Paris
1992: decorates the entrance to Ministry of National Education, Paris; publishes Lettre suit (Gallimard)
1993: The Fragile Garden, a mural painting in the small rotunda that connects the Hôtel de Lassay with the Palais Bourbon; retrospective at Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken.
1994: Honorary doctorate from the Université Libre de Bruxelles.
1995: Zoek de Zeven, with Hugo Claus, decoration with enamel wash at RUCA, Antwerp
1998: retrospective at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; retrospective at the Printroom of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva.
1999: Brush Thought in homage to Asger Jorn, mural with enamel wash at the Silkeborg Kunstmuseum (Denmark)
2000: Alechinsky, divers faits, Musée Jenisch, Vevey. Alechinsky, 50 ans d´imprimerie, Center for Engraving, La Louvière
2002: Alechinsky, The Complete Books (Ceuleers & Van de Velde, Antwerp
2004: Dessins de cinq décennies, retrospective at the Georges Pompidou Center, Paris. Prix André Malraux for Des deux mains (Mercure de France) and Carnet en deux temps (Buchet-Castel)
2005: Les Impressions de Pierre Alechinsky, Bibliothèque nationale de France; individual exhibition at the Kunsthalle in Emden
2006: Alechinsky, sources et resurgences by Daniel Abadie (Hazan) with an exhibition at the Maison René Char in L´Isle-sur-la-Sorgue ; Peter et Pierre, forty years of lithographies with Peter Bramsen (Buchet-Chastel)
2007: Les Affiches, catalogue raisonné (Ides et Calendes), Alechinsky from A to Y by Michel Draguet (Gallimard and Lannoo) for the present retrospective in Brussels at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.
[edit]Bibliography

Mueller-Yao, Marguerite: Der Einfluss der Kunst der chinesischen Kalligraphie auf die westliche informelle Malerei, Diss Bonn, Koeln Koenig 1985 , ISBN 3-88375-051-4 (pbk)
http://www.expo-alechinsky.be/EN/Tentoonstelling.aspx
[edit]References

^ tate.org.uk
^ moma.org
^ collections.walkerart.org