On Tuesday October 19th, PIASA is organising an Modern and Contemporary Art auction. As rich as it is diversified, this sale includes several pieces by narrative figuration artists such as Hervé Télémaque.
Born in 1937 in Haiti, Hervé Télémaque moved to Paris in 1961 after studying at the Art Student League in New York. He frequented the Surrealists and then developed a plastic language close to Pop Art and Figuration Narrative, of which he became a major representative.
In the works of this period, Télémaque assembles characters from the world of comics and Walt Disney's cartoons, various consumer objects (women's underwear, household utensils, such as the sponge reproduced in the work below), through an icy layout with bright colours. The climate of these works, mixing scathing humour and poetry, is entirely personal to him. In 1968, Télémaque's taste for assembly and relief led him to incorporate objects directly onto the canvas, resulting in compositions that he would later use in his paintings.
Télémaque's work is now internationally recognised. In 2015, the Centre Pompidou (Paris) paid tribute to him with a remarkable retrospective. In 2018, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired a historic painting by the artist: Untitled (The Ugly American) from 1964. Finally, Télémaque will soon benefit from two monographic exhibitions, one in October 2021 at the Serpentine Gallery in London curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist (entitled Free) and the other in Miami at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art), at the end of 2022.
Hervé Télémaque (born in 1937)
Ile de France n°2, 1970
Estimate: 25 000 / 35 000 €
