Skip to main content
Filter artworksArtworks
Close

Select a category:

  • Painting
  • Sculpture
  • Photography
  • Works on paper
Filter by keyword
Width range
- inches
Height range
- inches
Filters

Date

Edition

Medium

Nationality

Style

Price range
$
-
$
19th, 20th, 21st Century Art
Taylor Graham
American and European Art
Search submit
Wishlist
0

Enquiry list

This artwork has been saved in your enquiry list. You can either review your list and make an enquiry, or continue to browse and find other artworks.
View enquiry list
Continue browsing
Menu
  • Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Paintings
  • Sculpture
  • Photography
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Notable sales
  • Transport
  • Corporate art
  • Contact

Painting

Composition Abstraite
Composition Abstraite
Composition Abstraite, 1978
Jacques Germain
Oil on canvas
29 3/16 x 19 3/4 inches
Framed: 31 1/4 x 22 inches
Signed and dated verso
Add to enquiry list
Remove from wishlist
Share
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Previous
|
Next
149 
of 500
artist Description

artist

Jacques Germain is an internationally acclaimed abstract painter of the post-war School of Paris. As a young art student he had the privilege to work with Léger at the Académie Moderne (1931) and Kandinsky at the Bauhaus (from 1932 onwards). It wasn't until after WWII though that Germain first exhibited his work, at the Salon des Surindépendants of 1947. After a short initial figurative period, he soon began to explore abstraction, which seemed natural to him, geometric at first, before decamping to the Abstraction Lyrique group with Mathieu, Bryen, Riopelle, and Lanskoy, which formed the European equivalent to the American Abstract Expressionists. Here he enjoyed the freedom to paint with heightened gestural expression and developed the powerful resonant style magnificently employed in the present work painted in 1962 with which he achieved international success. His paintings, executed in this fluid manner, consist of an explosion of small rectangular surfaces, mostly in shades of white, lit by touches of vibrant color. Germain's contribution to the continuing re-interpretation of painting established him amongst the leading post-war painters:

 

"The same French lyrical use of colour which found its great champion in Delaunay, has new exponents in Bazaine, Estève, Lombard and Germain" (M. Seuphor: A Dictionary of Abstract Painting, London, 1958).

 

Jacques Germain achieved international status in the 1950's and featured in contemporary art exhibitions around the world until his recent death in 2001. In 1949 he started to exhibit at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, an annual Salon founded in 1946 dedicated solely to the display of abstract art. Germain also participated frequently in the famous yearly "École de Paris" shows at Galerie Charpentier alongside Atlan, Hartung, Soulages, Poliakoff, as well as in important group exhibitions both in France and abroad, most notably Le Mouvement dans l'art Contemporain (Musée de Lausanne, 1955), Exposition Internationale de l'Art Abstrait, to celebrate the publication of Michel Seuphor's seminal book on abstract art in 1957, Ecole de Paris (Mannheim, 1959), and the Irish International Exhibition of Modern Art (Dublin, 1962). He also held regular one man shows at the galleries Maeght, Pierre, Michel Warren, Kriegel, André Schoeller, Jacques Massol and Dina Vierny (for a comprehensive list of exhibitions please refer to the monograph Jacques Germain, Paris, 1990).

 

Perhaps the most lucid account of what motivated Germain's conception of art was published by the famous writer and critic Roger van Gindertaël:

 

"The poetry of Germain is dominated even in its smallest details, and above all through the steadfastness of his personal expression, by an interior movement in tune with the great rhythm of nature, not visually remarked and translated in a picturesque way, but intuitively perceived and manifested by a participating pictorial act. Germain's œuvre is among those, very rare still, in which the conceptualism of abstract art as well as the conventions of figurative art are overrun to find once more, in an uncontrived way, the profound meaning of nature" (R. van Gindertaël in Les Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1959).

 

The artist's work is represented in numerous important museums of modern art including the Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Musée d'Art Moderne (Paris, Ville), and the city museums of Lille, Bremen, Bergen, Lausanne, and Oslo. 

Description

The mature development of Germain's theory of lyricism is shown eloquently and superbly in Composition Abstraite, 1978, a late work by Jacques Germain. In this picture Germain creates a vertical example of his characteristic canvas style with an "explosion" of rectangular surfaces in varying tones of whites, blues, rusts, silvers, and mauves. Many of these rectangular forms are at the center or "core" of the canvas and seem to be ignited by touches of vibrant - almost fiery- red and orange lozenges. Germain has applied this stunning and radiant array of colors to the canvas in deliberate, rapid and rhythmic brushstrokes that enliven and energize the picture, a personal technique which helps both to heighten the expression of the work as well as to create a more intense design flow of both rotating and cascading color. However, in much the same way that all is not chaos in nature, the same holds true for Germain's works which have patterns, textures, and rhythms that contribute to this physical sense of energy radiating from the heart of the composition. These explosive energized depictions of vivid and shimmering rectangular surfaces would become Germain's signature style of painting and would help to establish him as one of the leading post-war painters in France and in all of Europe.

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences

New York

5 East 82nd Street

New York, NY 10028

 

203.216.3088

646.422.7884

 

Monday - Friday

9am - 5pm

And by Appointment

GREENWICH

80 Greenwich Avenue

Greenwich, CT 06830

 

203.216.3088

203.489.3163

 

Tuesday – Saturday

10am – 5pm

PORT CHESTER

168 Irving Avenue

Suite 301B

Port Chester, NY 10573

 

914.937.2070

 

By Appointment

Send an email
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Artsy, opens in a new tab.
Copyright © 2023 Taylor Graham
Site by Artlogic
Cookie policy

NEW YORK

5 East 82nd Street, New York, NY 10028 203.216.3088 - 646.422.7884 info@taylorandgraham.com
Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm and by Appointment

PORT CHESTER

168 Irving Avenue, Suite 301B Port Chester, NY 10573 914.937.2070
By Appointment

GREENWICH

80 Greenwich Avenue Greenwich, CT 06830 203.489.3136 – 203.216.3088 info@taylorandgraham.com
Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 5pm