PIASA presents two works of Claude Viallat,. He is one of the artists highlighted at the sale of Modern and Contemporary Art on December 3, 2019.
Born in Nimes, where he now lives, Claude Viallat studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier and then in Paris (1963). He moved to Nice while teaching at the School of Decorative Arts, where he met some artists from the "École de Nice" (Arman, Ben, Bernar Venet). In 1966, he developed his process of systematically working with a single form, a kind of bean impregnated on an untensioned and unprimed canvas at regular intervals. From then on, Viallat uses all types of flexible media to question the components of the pictorial act and uses dyeing processes to colour the canvas. While exhibiting regularly in Paris at the Galerie Jean Fournier, Viallat, from 1968, began work on knots and nets and experimented with new ways of hanging her works. His concerns joined those of other artists with whom he formed the Support-Surface group in September 1970; he quickly resigned after numerous disagreements in May 1971.
Claude Viallat (né en 1936) Sans titre, n°069, 1978
Estimate : 40000 / 60000 €
Moving to Marseille in 1973, Viallat developed his work by using unusual colours and supports, thus experiencing in turn the differences in matter, texture and colour from one work to another. The period of the late 1970s corresponds to a time of full pictorial development. Born from the combination of several rectangular canvases, our work (" Sans titre, n°069 ", 1978) reaches exceptional dimensions. Each of these canvases has a different orientation in the marking of the support, the pattern is released, while the colors are even more varied. We can measure here the richness of the method implemented by Viallat: the matrix form, both unique and multiple, never ceases to appeal to our eyes and our imagination. His propensity to mark square metres of canvas, to appropriate space, extends the material limits of the work to infinity. As we can see here, Viallat's work is to be understood as a unique principle, with permanent metamorphoses, each painting becoming the occasion for a complete redefinition. In a 1976 book, "Fragments", Viallat wrote: "The notion of repetitions, series or repetitions, becomes a necessity in fact. [...] A canvas - piece - alone is nothing, it is the process - system - that is important.
Claude Viallat (né en 1936) Sans titre, n°201, 1991
Estimate : 25000 / 35000 €
