Gérard Fromanger, Gerard (self-Portrait) , 2019, Series Friends. Pastel on paper, 80 x 60cm © Christian Baraja SLB
Musée Marmottan
How to represent a rising sun in 2019? Logically, Gérard Fromanger, a painter of the young street libertarian, chinese shadows in red and self-portraits in front of the showcases, pop if the seventies, is the guest of the Musée Marmottan Monet for a dialogue at the heart of the history of the item It responds by Monet and Impression, sunrise icon Marmottan and title given to the first impressionist exhibition of April 1874 and, ipso facto, to this current of light. His version is a canvas 200 × 300 cm which radiates from this energy if vital, with his palette arc-en-ciel. The own of its stroke, removed, and optimistic, confident and open to the world.
Logically, it is in front of this very large format, in the tradition of his last paintings in his retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, in 2016, that Fromanger celebrated valiantly its 80 years. Feast-day! The cake in the shape of a Rubik’s Cube, Cedric Grolet, artist, pastry chef of the Meurice hotel, went well by its sophisticated simplicity to this seducer of the “Figuration narrative”. Suddenly, a slight of hand, he draws a line, happy between the two portraits sharp of Monet and Pissarro. As it sweeps up in two sentences the return of cancer and his horrible treatment. The smile, the humor and the sharing forge his shield.
Man of the conversation, the anecdote of visual and memory sharp, he told Laurent Greilsamer of his early bohemian life, rough and tough, the sessions of the academies in the Grande Chaumière, the models that changed every hour, young, sometimes old, sixty, seventy years, and his meeting with Caesar, who invites him into his studio as a sculptor, empty rue Lhomond it to him ready with panache. His admiration for Picasso, the rose period and blue, inspired by Toulouse-Lautrec, one of the Demoiselles d’avignon , which draws on african art.
But above all, his decisive encounter with Alberto Giacometti in which he shares the process of painting and admires the post-cubist. He meets his idol at the Salon of May 1964, incidentally, because his table is too grey was hooked up to the toilet and hung there, the eye of Giacometti! It is a story that Fromanger loves to tell and that makes him laugh, even today, on this feast day for his 80 years.
High among the Jesuits Gérard Fromanger, Salon de Thé , 1971, Series Boulevard des Italiens . Oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm. Collection of Michel and Martine Brossard Musée Marmottan
out of the “paint-painting”, he explained to his biographer. “In the 1960s, Georges Pompidou industrializes France. The cars are manufactured by the millions in the chain. The lyricism, the poetry, the beauty will disappear, crushed by the chain of production. This is the end of the craft and of the person for the benefit of the collective is immense beyond us. I say to myself: I must watch this”.
This will give, via a photo of Gérard Philipe by Agnès Varda during a performance of the Prince of Homburg , one of its key tables where the character floats on a monochrome background. It is to be called the first Made in France . Today, it is called The Prince of Homburg and lives in the shelter of the spotlight in a star collection but very private.
Gérard Fromanger, The sun floods my canvas , 1966, Series The Table in question . Glyptal, acrylic on cut-out wood, 145 x 115cm. Collection Fanny Deleuze Miusée Marmottan
This son educated by the Jesuits is today synonymous of Fine Arts under the breath of May ‘ 68. This is the birth of the Atelier populaire des Beaux-Arts, founded by the office of the Young painters and artists of the GRAV (Groupe de recherche d’art visuel).
This seductive born tells the story of the life explosive and rebellious at the Beaux-Arts: “We were installed on the first floor. It was immersed in a life of work, madness total. One eats, one sleeps on the premises. Castel makes us deliver bags of fifty loaves of bread all fresh, crispy. One of his friends bring us jerry cans of gasoline so that we can go pick up the equipment in the car. The workers typographers of the Figaro we deposit huge paper rolls. It was invented in a factory and there was a three-eight, even though they don’t feel like it. The Workshop has produced about 800 posters each time one thousand copies.!”.
The exhibition of Eric de Chassey at the Beaux-Arts last year demonstrated the vitality, creative, impertinence and youth in a large selection.
Bravache, foutraque, and now historic
Logically, Fromanger has kept, this period bravache, foutraque, and now historic, tenacity and joy in action. “By the end of 2017, while preparations for the dialogue with the Musée Marmottan are still confidential, Fromanger draws a suite of sixteen portraits of the painters of yesterday and today, from Giotto to Bruce Nauman. Through these tributes (a pattern of practice at home since the 1970s), Fromanger brings together a community of artists who form the inner circle of his friends, a title he gives to this series. Caillebotte and Pissarro are not there yet (they will soon), Monet is on the other hand”, emphasized today the Musée Marmottan. His hand short in color, draws the great masters he encloses in a network of lines, network connections, human, his cosmos to him, but it applies just as much in the shipments of each one of his books, the impulses of the heart to his friends and his audience and passion innate to the artist.
Gérard Fromanger at the Museum Marmottan-Monet. 2, rue Louis-Boilly (Xvi). Tel.: 01 44 96 50 33. Opening hours: mar. the sun., from 10h to 18h. Until 29 September. To read: “Fromanger of all colors”, 2018, by Laurent Greilsamer (Gallimard, collection examples of the art-led by Jean-Loup Champion, 25€).
