François Morellet (30 April 1926 – 10 May 2016)[1] was a French contemporary painter, sculptor, and light artist. His early work prefigured minimal art and conceptual art, and he played a prominent role in the development of geometrical abstract art.
Career
After a short period of figurative/representational work, Morellet turned to abstraction in 1950 and he adopted a pictorial language of simple geometric forms: lines, squares and triangles assembled into two-dimensional compositions. In 1961, he was one of the founders of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), with fellow artists Francisco Sobrino, Horatio Garcia-Rossi, Hugo DeMarco, Julio Le Parc, Jean-Pierre Yvaral (the son of Victor Vasarely) and Joël Stein, François Molnar and Vera Molnar (the last two left the group shortly after). Morellet began at this time to work with neon tube lighting.
From the 1960s on, Morellet worked in various materials (fabric, tape, neon, walls...) and in doing so investigated the use of the exhibition space in terms similar to artists of installation art and environmental art. He gained an international reputation, especially in Germany and France, and he was commissioned to create work for public and private collections in Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and the U.S.A. One of his works is part of the permanent collection of the Centre for International Light Art (CILA) in Unna, Germany. In 2016/2017, the CILA stages a retrospective of Morellet's Light Art, the last exhibition to be curated by the artist himself, shortly before his death in May 2016.[2]
François Morellet is represented by Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris.
Work
For Morellet, a work of art referred only to itself. His titles are generally sophisticated, show some word play, and describe the "constraints" or "rules" that he used to create them. Like other contemporary artists who use constraints and chance (or the aleatory) in their works (John Cage in music, the Oulipo group in literature), Morellet used rules and constraints established in advance to guide the creation of his works, and also allowed chance to play a role in some of his compositions.[3]
His rigorous use of geometry tends to create emotionally neutral work, and placed him close to Minimal art and Conceptual art in his aims. He shared a particular affinity to the American artists Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella and Sol LeWitt.
Series: Répartitions aléatoires ("Chance divisions") from the 1950s
Répartition de 16 formes identiques - painted after his visit to the Alhambra of Grenada
Series: Trames from the 1950s
Series: Désintégrations architecturales ("Architectural disintegrations") from 1971
Series: Géométrées from 1983
Series: Défigurations from 1988
Series: Déclinaisons de pi ("Versions of pi") from 1998
''Album de 10 sérigraphies sur 10 ans'' (1952-1961), François Morellet, 1975, Musée Groninger
Album de 10 sérigraphies sur 10 ans 01.jpg
Album de 10 sérigraphies sur 10 ans 02.jpg
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Album de 10 sérigraphies sur 10 ans 10.jpg
Footnotes
François Morellet, French Abstract Artist, Dies at 90
Centre for International Light Art, Exhibition info MORELLET (24.09.2016-29.01.2017)
Lejeunne, Denis. 2012. The Radical Use of Chance in 20th Century Art, Rodopi Press, Amsterdam, pp. 129-173
References
Beate Reifenscheid und Dorothea van der Koelen; Arte in Movimento – Kunst in Bewegung, Dokumente unserer Zeit XXXIV; Chorus-Verlag; Mainz 2011; ISBN 978-3-926663-44-3
Lemoine, Serge (2000). Art Concret (in French). Paris: Espace de l’Art Concret/Réunion des musées nationaux. ISBN 2-7118-4069-7.
Kazimir Malevitch & François Morellet/ Carrément Texts by Bernard Marcadé, Jean-Claude Marcadé, François Morellet, Serge Lemoine, Editions Kamel Mennour, 2011.
Carrément - Discrètement. Exhibition catalogue. Text by Christian Skimao. Montpellier, 2001.
Lejeunne, Denis. 2012. The Radical Use of Chance in 20th Century Art, Rodopi Press, Amsterdam, pp. 129–173
Lemoine, Serge. François Morellet. Waser Verlag: Zurich, 1986.
Lemoine, Serge. François Morellet. Flammarion: Paris, 1996.
Morellet. Exhibition catalogue. Essays by Dominique Bozo, Bernard Blistène, Catherine Millet, Rudi Oxenaar, Alain Coulange, Johannes Cladders; Interview with Christian Besson. Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1986.
Morellet. Exhibition catalogue. Essays by Jean-François Groulier, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Thomas McEvilley, Arnauld Pierre; Chronology by Stéphanie Jamet. Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume/Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris 2000.
Morellet, François. Mais comment taire mes commentaires Collections: Ecrits d’artistes. École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1999.
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