artist/ Mathieu

France

Georges Mathieu is a famous French painter born in 1921 in Boulogne-sur-Mer in Pas-de-Calais and died in 2012 in Boulogne-Billancourt. He is known to be at the initiative of the movement known as Lyrical Abstraction. He studied law, literature and philosophy at the University of Lille, then started painting in 1942. Georges Mathieu quickly opposes geometric abstraction which gives a central place to the form and structure of a canvas, and abounds in the direction of American gestural painting then much more liberated. He is the promoter of Lyrical Abstraction, a movement devoid of any constraint and freed from classical artistic codes. He draws his inspiration for this from American Action Painting, whose proponents and philosophy he admires. In 1947, during his first exhibition at the Salon des Réalités nouvelles, he declared “Liberty is emptiness”. From 1950, a component of Lyrical Abstraction was conceptualized: tachisme, which refers to the canvases of Georges Mathieu, emblems of informal art, in the middle of which are enthroned tasks generated by projections, splashes or even drips. The goal is to give as much freedom as possible to the material, by influencing their movement in a minimal way. It is a matter of depositing them without a precise objective, furtively, in a thoughtless way, and then letting them evolve as they please, detaching themselves from any artistic conformity. Georges Mathieu does not use any tool, definitively freeing itself from technique. He paints directly using color tubes. The artist also multiplies the creations in public. Malraux calls him the “Western calligrapher”. In 1985, the artist went further by operating a final turning point in his painting: he freed himself from the central form, the last vestige of the classical rules of art. From now on, it is the whole canvas that is taken over by the forms. Deeply convinced that the artist should not remain in his ivory tower, Georges Mathieu is also active in the public domain. In 1947, he became Director of Public Relations for the American company United States Lines in Paris.

From 1953, he will be its editor-in-chief for a period of 10 years. A great traveler, he stayed in particular in the United States, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Lebanon, Israel, Canada and in almost all European countries. These trips cause him to raise awareness as a citizen. He realizes that the challenge of his time is to reconcile man with his environment. The artist has more than ever his place in this meaningless world and a major role to play. Georges Mathieu then began a series of manual works, involving furniture, jewelry, tapestries, fountains, posters, medals, stamps and even went so far as to create the new 10-franc coin. Following this same logic, he produced several monumental sculptures, in particular for the Sports Complex of Neuilly, for the Elf-Aquitaine Tower of La Défense, for the CES of Charenton, for the Town Hall of Orléans, Boulogne-Billancourt, Brive… Georges Mathieu is a committed artist, definitely convinced of the primordial role of education in society. He fights in favor of an education which would privilege sensitivity for the benefit of reason and the progress of man for the benefit of economic progress. In 1976, he became Administrator of the Society for the Encouragement of Artistic Professions as well as Member of the Commission for the reform of artistic education. Georges Mathieu has made throughout his career more than 120 individual exhibitions, notably in New York, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro, Bahrain, Tunis, Singapore, Paris, Tokyo and in all major world cities. It is possible to admire his work in more than 79 museums and public collections.