Gérard Traquandi — À la source — Catherine Putman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Ends in 11 days: March 16 → May 7, 2024

« Il ne s’agit pas de peindre la vie, il s’agit de rendre vivante la peinture » Bonnard
(It isn’t a question of painting life but aims at making painting alive)

It is pure delight for the eyes, a breath of cool air on your face — Gérard Traquandi’s new exhibition at Galerie Putman. Also including a few small paintings on cardboard, most of the works are on paper and made since 2021. Recent graphic work in which you feel the pleasure of exploring the infinite variety of techniques and supports: watercolour, pencil and oil pastel on papers of various quality and texture. A more intimate, more humble graphic world with smaller formats than his frequently monumental painting that is more related to the public domain but that conserves the same generosity and depth. We find this twin source: observation of the beauty of nature and a strong taste for the work of the masters. Here, still-lives and landscapes captured directly in the Mediterranean area dear to the artist—from Marseilles to Corsica and Italy. There religious scenes, here bathers in an Arcadian natural setting in which you will meet Poussin, Cézanne or Bonnard.

With Gérard Traquandi, history is at the corner of the street. The past is not set on a pedestal. Each motif vibrates intensely in him and in us, here and now. It is magical intersection of things that correspond. A gesture, a colour and suddenly. Presence. Atmosphere, texture, light. Nature here and the work there. This mystery of doing. This beauty of endazzlement. As in his painting, we find in Gérard Traquandi’s drawings a little of what he is—the man of the South. Like him, his work is real and solar, bathed in vivacity, in Mediterranean heat. Gérard Traquandi’s drawings are right. ‘Hand and eye go together and you no longer try to play the artist or make a fine drawing’ as he often tells his students with a smile. ‘You have to forget yourself! Just be there, in the present.’

It is in this presence in the world that the drawing then opens up. And it also becomes a presence. It brushes against you, touches you. It is firmly there, extremely tactile, a body laid out that suddenly acquires life. Incredible vibrations of blues, reds and yellows that rise from eyes to mouth, from finger to skin: here, they possess the flavour of a pomegranate and the texture of a lemon, there they are vibrant, intense atmospheres as light as a cloud, as hot as the midday sun, as blinding as the sea or as cool as the shade of a tree. They are paradises on earth. Small instants of beauty torn from the speed of the world. Little islands of classic. dreams. Alive.

Amélie Adamo, February 2024