François Morellet (30 April 1926 – 10 May 2016) was a French contemporary abstract painter, sculptor, and

light art Light art or The Art of Light is generally referring to a visual art form in which (physical) light is the main, if not sole medium of creation. Uses of the term differ drastically in incongruence; definitions, if existing, vary in several asp ...

ist. His early work prefigured

minimal art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or co ...

and

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

and he played a prominent role in the development of geometrical abstract art and

post-conceptual art Post-conceptual, postconceptual, post-conceptualism or postconceptualism is an art theory that builds upon the legacy of conceptual art in contemporary art, where the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work takes some precedence over traditiona ...

Career

Morellet began to make still-life paintings at the age of 14 as he studied Russian literature in Paris. After completing his studies, he returned to

Cholet Cholet (, , probably from Latin language, Latin ''cauletum'', "cabbage") is a Communes of France, commune of western France in the Maine-et-Loire Departments of France, department. With 54,307 inhabitants (2019), it is the second most populous c ...

in 1948, where he continued to paint, now in the spirit of the COBRA movement. After this short period of figurative/representational work, Morellet turned to abstraction in 1950 after encountering the

Concrete art Concrete art was an art movement with a strong emphasis on geometrical abstraction. The term was first formulated by Theo van Doesburg and was then used by him in 1930 to define the difference between his vision of art and that of other abstract art ...

Max Bill Max Bill (22 December 1908 – 9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer. Early life and education Bill was born in Winterthur. After an apprenticeship as a silversm ...

. Morellet then adopted a pictorial language of simple geometric forms: lines, squares and triangles assembled into two-dimensional compositions. In 1960, he was one of the founders of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), with fellow artists

Francisco Sobrino Francisco Sobrino (1932 – 11 May 2014) was a Spanish sculptor. His career began in 1959 when he moved to Paris to have a start in his career. His works can be seen in Tel Aviv, Guadalajara, Chicago, Madrid, New York City ...

Horatio Garcia-Rossi Horatio is an English male given name, an Italianized form of the ancient Roman Latin '' nomen'' (name) '' Horatius'', from the Roman '' gens'' (clan) '' Horatia''. The modern Italian form is ''Orazio'', the modern Spanish form ''Horacio''. It app ...

, Hugo DeMarco, Julio Le Parc, Jean-Pierre Yvaral (the son of

Victor Vasarely Victor Vasarely (; born Győző Vásárhelyi, ; 9 April 1906 – 15 March 1997) was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement. His work entitled ''Zebra'', created in 1937, is consid ...

), Joël Stein,

Vera Molnár Vera Molnár (born 1924) is a Hungarian media artist living and working in France. Molnar is widely considered to be a pioneer of computer art and generative art, and is also one of the first women to use computers in her art practice. Born in ...

and

François Molnár François () is a French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis. People with the given name * Francis I of France, King of France (), known as "the Father and Restorer of Letters" * Francis II of France, Kin ...

(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 Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...

and

environmental art Environmental art is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical approaches to nature in art and more recent ecological and politically motivated types of works. Environmental art has evolved away from formal concerns, for example ...

. 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 Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

and the

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

One of his works is part of the permanent collection of the Centre for International Light Art (CILA) in

Unna Unna is a city of around 59,000 people in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, the seat of the Unna district. The newly refurbished Unna station has trains to all major cities in North Rhine Westphalia including Dortmund, Cologne, Münster, Hamm, ...

, Germany. In 2016/2017, the CILA staged a retrospective of Morellet's Light Art, the last exhibition to be curated by the artist himself, shortly before his death in May 2016.

Work

Morellet's abstract ideal was, he said, tempered by the charming nihilism of

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

. For him, a work of art referred only to itself. His titles are generally sophisticated, show some Duchampian 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 Aleatoricism or aleatorism, the noun associated with the adjectival aleatory and aleatoric, is a term popularised by the musical composer Pierre Boulez, but also Witold Lutosławski and Franco Evangelisti, for compositions resulting from "actio ...

) in their works, such as ( John Cage in music and the

Oulipo Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...

group in literature, Morellet used rules and constraints established in advance to guide the creation of his works while also allowing

chance Chance may refer to: Mathematics and Science * In mathematics, likelihood of something (by way of the Likelihood function and/or Probability density function). * ''Chance'' (statistics magazine) Places * Chance, Kentucky, US * Chance, Mary ...

to play a role in some of his compositions. This dialectic between the rigid rule-based procedure and chance situates his work within the

Post-conceptual art Post-conceptual, postconceptual, post-conceptualism or postconceptualism is an art theory that builds upon the legacy of conceptual art in contemporary art, where the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work takes some precedence over traditiona ...

category. His rigorous use of geometry tends to create emotionally neutral work, and also placed him close to

Minimal art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or co ...

and

Conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

in his aims. He shared a particular affinity to the American artists

Ellsworth Kelly Ellsworth Kelly (May 31, 1923 – December 27, 2015) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, c ...

Frank Stella Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City. Biography Frank Stella was born in Ma ...

and

Sol LeWitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...

. * Series: ''Répartitions aléatoires'' ("Chance divisions") from the 1950s * ''Répartition de 16 formes identiques'' - painted after his visit to the Alhambra of Granada * 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 File:Album de 10 sérigraphies sur 10 ans 03.jpg File:Album de 10 sérigraphies sur 10 ans 07.jpg File:Album de 10 sérigraphies sur 10 ans 08.jpg File:Album de 10 sérigraphies sur 10 ans 09.jpg

Recognition

* April 10, 2016, the first François Morellet Prize (awarded to a personality for his writings on art) was awarded to

Catherine Millet Catherine Millet (; born 1 April 1948 in Bois-Colombes, Hauts-de-Seine) is a French writer, art critic, curator, and founder and editor of the magazine '' Art Press'', which focuses on modern art and contemporary art. Biography Born in Bois-Col ...

by Philippe Méaille. This prize is awarded every year as part of Les Journées nationales du Livre et du Vin (The National Book and Wine Days) in Saumur ( Loire Valley), in partnership with the

Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art The Château de Montsoreau-Museum Contemporary Art is a private museum open to the public in Montsoreau, France. It opened 8 April 2016. The permanent collection exhibited at Château de Montsoreau consists of Philippe Méaille's collection of w ...

. * November 7, 2016, the Centre Georges Pompidou gathers Francois Morellet's friends and accomplices at a lecture-event. * December 13, 2016, the

installs "Curved door-to-door" on its facade. * October 6, 2017, the museum of art and history of

dedicates a room to François Morellet in which will be regularly presented different works.

Art market

From 2017 until 2020, Morellet's estate worked with Lévy Gorvy before moving to

Hauser & Wirth Hauser & Wirth is a Swiss contemporary and modern art gallery. History Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth, and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by co-president Marc Payot. In 2020, Ewan Venters was ap ...

.Alex Greenberger (November 23, 2020)
Estate of Pioneering Abstractionist François Morellet Heads to Hauser & Wirth, Departing Blue-Chip Competitor
''

ARTnews ''ARTnews'' is an American visual-arts magazine, based in New York City. It covers art from ancient to contemporary times. ARTnews is the oldest and most widely distributed art magazine in the world. It has a readership of 180,000 in 124 countr ...

''.

Footnotes

References

* Beate Reifenscheid und Dorothea van der Koelen; Arte in Movimento – Kunst in Bewegung, Dokumente unserer Zeit XXXIV; Chorus-Verlag; Mainz 2011; * * ''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.

External links

* Projet à sticker
Cneai (National Center for Edition, Art and Images)

Chatou Chatou () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. Chatou is a part of the affluent suburbs of western Paris and is on the northwest side of the Seine river about from the city's center. Hi ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Morellet, Francois 1926 births 2016 deaths Op art French sculptors French male sculptors Minimalist artists French contemporary artists 20th-century French painters 20th-century male artists French male painters 21st-century French painters 21st-century male artists People from Cholet