Henri Michaux — Figures — Lelong & Co Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 25 → March 10, 2018

This exhibition presents a dozen works on paper by Henri Michaux, produced around the 1970s with a common theme of the emergence or formal disappearance of one or more figures. This phenomenon comes to life through strange and/or ghost-like silhouettes, where all the creative richness of the artist is visible. These "beings”, produced using acrylic, often with a vigorous tempo, seem to quiver, to be in motion. As if transformed by a vibration, these figures stretch and change shape, moving and shifting from one work to another.

Henri Michaux, (Namur, 1899 — Paris, 1984), was both a writer and painter and always expressed himself with great freedom and independence. This was visible from the 1920s in his prose and poems, quickly followed by his graphic, sketched and painted works. He continued with this dual activity — the two aspects meeting from time to time, in works such as Meidosems or Misérable miracle — until the end of his life.

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His work now forms part of the collections of some of the world’s greatest museums: Guggenheim Museum (New York); MACBA (Barcelone); MNAM Centre Pompidou (Paris); Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo); Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (Genève); Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid); MoMA (New York); Tate Modern (London).