Jean DegottexMercurielle
1956
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated on the back
39.37 x 31.89 in ( 100 x 81 cm )

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Inquiry - Mercurielle, 1956

The void is very present in the work of Jean Degottex. It is represented here by a long, wide rift that cuts the canvas diagonally, like a rupture that no one can hold back. A certain meditative slowness elicits the vivacitý of the gesture, and relates space and time. His  espaces-vides, repeat, tirelessly, his desire for the infinite and the unlimited.

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.