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Claude Viseux (1927–2008) Tree of Life, 1956 Ink and collage…
See original version (French)
25
-
Claude Viseux (1927–2008) Tree of Life, 1956 Ink and collage…
See original version (French)
Estimate €300 - €500
Voluntary lot
Description
Claude Viseux (1927–2008) Tree of Life, 1956 Ink and collage on paper, signed and dated in the bottom right-hand corner 65 x 50 cm Provenance: > Private collection, Gironde
Exhibitions: > Claude Viseux, Collages, 1956–2008 – Abbaye de Beaulieu, Centre d’art contemporain, 7 June to 30 September 2009 – our work reproduced on page 9 of the exhibition catalogue
Condition report: Framed “Collage exists to contradict reality. To make things say what they do not wish to be.” Claude Viseux
This is one of Claude Viseux’s very first collages! A technique dear to the artist and an essential bridge for understanding the link between his graphic works and his sculpture.
Claude Viseux, the untamed
‘Being an observer is not enough. I must take and recreate the appearance of things in another form to better deny reality. ”
— Claude Viseux
Often – too hastily – regarded as the creator of work that is unclassifiable and bewildering, we invite you to take a fresh look at 60 years of Claude Viseux’s creative output.
In doing so, you may realise, as Geviève Bonnefoi wrote in 1965, ‘that through such diverse explorations, one can discover in Viseux’s work a rather surprising continuity, an indisputable mark of his personality and temperament. He is one of those artists passionate about technique and knowledge who strive towards a ‘total art’, the only form capable of expressing the various aspirations of modern man.’
Through a collection of 32 works ranging from his earliest canvases of 1949 (lot 23, *L’Accouchement*) to his final collages in 2007, we invite you on a journey – a one-way trip – through the work of an uncompromising artist.
Is this not, in fact, the very definition of an artist? To devote one’s entire life to creation, following one’s own path, never backing down, always pushing forward, renewing technique, questioning aesthetics, innovating, blending, and challenging the viewer’s perspective…
This approach has baffled many; it has not always been understood: moving from canvas to sculpture, from oil paint to Ripolin, sculpting with bones, painting with crabs, combining bronze and metal, returning to canvas then to bronze and assembling industrial steel with thick welds… interspersing this journey, dedicated to abstraction, with collages incorporating elements of reality to form chimeras emerging from prehistoric waters… Are you lost?
Yet the work is there, solid, firmly rooted: the marine, biological world blends marvellously with the industrial, and both permeate every period of the artist’s career.
Claude Viseux was born and raised in Champagne-sur-Oise, in the Paris region. In 1946, he studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he met Jean Prouvé and Constantin Brancusi, and eventually decided to turn to painting.
Success was almost immediate: his first exhibition was held at the Galerie Vibaud in 1952; by 1955 his works were being shown at René Drouin’s gallery; then Daniel Cordier chose him – for his very first exhibition! – in 1956. In 1957, he was honoured by Léo Castelli in New York! From 1959–1960, he created his first sculptures using objects found on the seashore – casts in bronze of stones and seaweed – followed by industrial steel, cut, assembled and welded in the style of his Surrealist friends Max Ernst, Man Ray and Henri Michaux…
In 1972, he represented the French pavilion at the Venice Biennale alongside Christian Boltanski, Jean le Gac and Gérard Titus-Carmel, where he unveiled his famous ‘Instables’ series. That same year, he installed a huge stainless-steel sculpture suspended in the Auber RER station in Paris. In 1977, to mark his 50th birthday, the Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris organised an exhibition entitled ‘Viseux’ from June to September. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he made numerous trips to India, whose myths and traditions subtly permeated his drawings and collages, and whose influence can also be seen in his sculptures.
A year before his death, whilst living in Anglet – always close to the water – Claude Viseux continued to create collages blending the marine world with industrial forms (see lots 54 and 55), which are unsettling echoes of the 1956 *Expériences automatiques du crabe* (see lots 30 and 31) and the sculptures that punctuate his career.
The words of Geneviève Bonnefoi resonate here: ‘Through such diverse explorations, one can discover in Viseux’s work a rather surprising continuity, an indisputable mark of his personality and temperament. ’ The artist never gave in, never ceased to exist; it is up to us to keep his unique and unshakeable body of work alive.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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