Art
André Marfaing - Lumières noires
until October 28
10:30am-12:30pm, 2:30-6:30pm (except sun., mon.),
galerie Claude Bernard,
7-9, rue des Beaux-Arts, 6è, 0143269707.
11am-1pm, 2:30-7am (except sun., mon.),
galerie Berthet-Aittouarès,
14, rue de Seine, 6è, 0143265309.
Entrée Libre.
TTT
While his post-war paintings are highly sought-after by collectors, his work remains somewhat unknown to the general public - the paradox of fame. The double exhibition opening this week at Galerie Claude Bernard and Berthet-Aittouarès should help to restore his reputation. André Marfaing was born in Toulouse in 1925, moved to Paris in 1949 and met Pierre Soulages in 1952. A painter of lyrical abstraction, he shared Soulages' admiration for Romanesque art and his attraction to black. For Soulages, the powerful gesture is carried out flush with the canvas, and the compositions give pride of place to signs as effects of clarity and velvety blacks. Towards the end of his life, his painting became even more refined, reduced to a calligraphy of gesture. His canvases are a mixture of luminous cracks and intense blacks. The art of Marfaing, who died in 1987, richly deserves this tribute.