Jean DegottexLa Vague
1954
Oil on canvas
Signed lower left and dated at the reverse
12.8 x 8.66 in ( 32.5 x 22 cm )

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Inquiry - La Vague, 1954

  Following André Breton's invitation, Jean Degottex spent his summer in Bretagne. The nature that surrounds him and the emotions he feels will be a real source of inspiration. The artist walks on the beach and draws directly on the ground.               "A figurative starting point transposed into an inner rhythm that seems to command the drawing, perception of a natural movement, rendered by the slenderness of the wrist and the speed of the gesture. Very soon it was no longer just a question of models or painting subjects, but of elements of the world, chosen and annexed, abstract elements, that is to say deprived of their function, obsolete, and which come back to life eyes of the artist and enter into the process of creating the painting. »

Jean Frémon, Degottex, Edition du regard, 1986, Paris

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.