Jean DegottexSans Titre
1965
Gouache and ink on paper
Signed and dedicated to Eddy Novarro
25.59 x 19.69 in ( 65 x 50 cm )ZoomInquiry - Sans Titre, 1965
Certificat
Provenance
Eddy Novarro, gift from the artist
Private Collection, Germany
Literature
Who is who, E.Novarro and the avant-garde from the 50s to the 70s, Wienand, 2011, p. 84
Exhibited
Pablo Picasso Museum, Munster, Germany, 2011
Staatliches Museum Schwerin, Germany, 2015
Artwork's description
This work is executed using almost calligraphic gestures, on a white background. A large red task reinforces the Japanese side and gives shine to this work on paper. Jean Degottex offered this work to Eddy Novarro, a famous photographer known for his artist portraits. From Picasso and Duchamp to Rauschenberg, César, Arman, Bacon, Tinguely, or Christo, three generations of artists have been targeted by Eddy Novarro's lens.
“ Eddy Novarro occupies a special place on the scene of contemporary photography which has recognized the original specificity of his immense talent as a portrait painter. He frequented the greats of this world and also the princely courts, but he knew how to prefer the world of contemporary arts to them. Dozens and dozens of faces, but above all a horizon of gazes. Yes, Novarro is the master of the gaze “.
Pierre Restany
Artist's biography
Jean Degottex, is a French painter, born in 1918 in Sathonay-Camp. At the end of the Second World War, Degottex met painters belonging to the Lyrical Abstraction movement, for which he adhered.
The first gallery to exhibit him in 1949 is Denise René. In 1951, he received the Kandinsky Prize.
In 1955 he met André Breton, who introduced him to Zen thought and oriental calligraphy, in particular that of China. It is from this discovery that Degottex's artistic research work will take another turn: all his next works will be influenced by surrealist automatic writing and by the essential principles of Zen philosophy.
The realization of a table takes place thus, the artist plunges into a meditative state which then allows him to apply dark colors on the bottom of his canvas, which thereafter, this state of meditation allows to prepare the gesture creative.
Jean Degottex died in 1988 in Paris.