Mathieu, Georges.
Works of the artist.
Georges Mathieu (Bologne-sur-mer 1921 – Boulogne-Billancourt 2012) was a French painter renowned for founding the lyrical abstract movement. [+]
Mathieu, Georges
Georges Mathieu (Bologne-sur-mer 1921 – Boulogne-Billancourt 2012) was a French painter renowned for founding the lyrical abstract movement.
As a self-taught artist, he began painting landscapes and portraits in 1942, after graduating with a double degree in literature and philosophy from the Université de Lille. In 1947 he moved to Paris where he exhibited in the Salon des Realités Nouvelles and organized a solo show associated with Tachism, along with artists such as Hans Hartung and the painter and poet Camille Bryen.
At the beginning of his artistic career, he was interested in geometric abstraction and in the drip technique. However, he soon left behind these traditional abstract characteristics to focus on form and gesture, which resulted in the creation of lyrical abstraction.
Mathieu promoted and spread this movement through various exhibitions. The same year that he moved to Paris, he organized the first show at Galerie de Luxembourg, titled L’imaginaire. In the following years, he worked along art critic Michel Tapié to curate more at different galleries like, Galerie Allendy, Galerie des Deux Îles or Galerie Nina Dausset.
For Mathieu, lyrical abstraction depended a lot on the speed of brushstrokes. He often applied paint directly from the pot, emphasizing the importance of instant execution. Additionally, he adopted lyrical abstraction as a form of performance. He dressed up and painted in front of an audience, emphasizing the constant movement and the expressive intuition required by his style. This method anticipated the technique of Yves Klein and other artists of the following years.
Since the beginning of his career, he exhibited in the most important shows. In 1949, he participated in the collective exhibition, Huit Oeuvres Nouvelles with artists such as Jean Dubuffet or Jean Fautrier, while in 1950 Galerie René Drouin presented his first solo show. Later, in 1963, the Musée National d’Art Moderne of Paris curated his first retrospective exhibition, an honor that few artists of the time achieved so early in their careers. Due to his artistic individualism and his distinct stays in Japan, the United States, Brazil, Argentina and the Middle East, his work also rapidly gained international recognition.
Nowadays his paintings are part of some of the biggest museums in the world: the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou of Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles, the Tate Museum of London, the Kunstmuseum of Basel or the Guggenheim and MOMA of New York.
