Jean DegottexMétasphère
1966
Mixed technique on paper
Signed and dated lower right
25.59 x 19.69 in ( 65 x 50 cm )ZoomInquiry - Métasphère, 1966
Provenance
Private Collection, Paris
Artwork's description
Métasphere was realized in 1966, three years after the loss of his daughter Frédérique. This loss suspended Jean Degottex's work for one year. Subsequently, he embarked on a new phase where he abandoned conventional painting techniques to immerse himself in the exploration of the material itself. This exploration includes canvas, paper, and later, brick or wood. Jean Degottex folds, glues, tears, scratches, scrapes, and lifts to pave the way for the unknown that can emerge from the material itself.
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.