La galerie Berthet-Aittouarès fête ses 40 ans
There are places where art history is not only displayed but lived, written, debated and continually reinvented. To mark its fortieth anniversary, Galerie Berthet Aittouarès entrusted art historian Pierre Wat with the inaugural curatorship of a series of exhibitions drawing on a collection of remarkable richness, shaped throughout by a discerning eye and an instinctive commitment to singular forms that offer alternative visions of the world. The selection unfolds as a compelling journey through art history in the making, where artistic encounters intertwine with personal trajectories, those of the artists as much as those of the gallerists who championed them.
La galerie fête ses 40 ans — Carte blanche à Pierre Wat @ Berthet – Aittouarès Gallery from May 29 to July 18. Learn more Establishing a powerful rhythm throughout the space, the exhibition plays on resonances and contrasts between works of exceptional quality, where forces of proliferation stand against states of stillness. Through variations and reinventions, familiar points of reference dissolve, opening onto some of the richest artistic perspectives of the twentieth century and those of several promising successors. The signs and traces of Henri Michaux, Jean Degottex and Hans Hartung sketch out landscapes inhabited by the vegetal calligraphy of Antoine Schneck’s trees and the evocative forms of Marisa Albanese. Writing inhabits the body in the work of Nil Yalter before emancipating itself to become its own support in the practice of Vera Molnar.
The notion of the “line”, placed by Pierre Wat at the heart of his curatorial vision, refers to a distinctive style, to the way each artist succeeded in finding a visual language that brings gesture and meaning together, an art inseparable from the manner of its making. Here, making and being become one, each work expressing a world that strikes us with force wherever we encounter it. Baya, Sophia Fassi and Bertrand Hugues, meanwhile, distinguish themselves through more figurative compositions that are no less vibrant, drawing on narrative qualities that remain equally open and expansive.
This vibrant synthesis reaches its culmination in the pedestal positioned at the entrance, where a magnificent box by Jindrich Heisler rests. With its spellbinding presence, it presides over the messages of affection addressed to the gallery’s founders, a reminder that their commitment has nourished far more than their own lives: it has illuminated the lives of others as well.
