until November 27, 2011, at MAMAC
The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Nice considers the fundamental question of the artist on color when it becomes essential. “Color Forward” emphasizes an artistic mode of expression where color is the necessary condition. The project is built around artists from different generations who have all placed color at the forefront of their aesthetic choices at one point or another in their careers while residing on the French Riviera.
Several lines of thought guided the selection of works: color is the primary state of sensitivity of the work, its climate, its emotion; it is life. It is a vector of spirituality. It asserts itself as a constitutive act, a manifesto. It gains autonomy in relation to line and form. It leads to the erasure of the figure up to abstraction.
Asserted and highlighted vis-à -vis form and figure by the proponents of modernity (Raoul Dufy, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Max Ernst, Nicolas de Staël, Hans Hartung, Alexander Calder…), color emancipates itself up to monochrome (Ellsworth Kelly, Yves Klein, Alberto Burri, Roland Flexner, Bernar Venet, Mimmo Rotella, Gottfried Honegger, Vivien Isnard, Louis Cane, Denis Castellas, Albert Chubac, Rotraut Klein-Moquay…), it eludes the painter’s tools (Niki de Saint Phalle, César, Arman, Martial Raysse, Raymond Hains, Georges Rousse…).
Successive generations have often taken up these questions and extended them with innovative responses (Robert Malaval, Patrick Saytour, Claude Viallat, André Valensi, Bernard Pagès, Noël Dolla, Daniel Dezeuze, Max Charvolen, Jean-Charles Blais, Serge III, Robert Filliou, Erik Dietman, Pierre Pinoncelli, Jacqueline Gainon).
New creations in turn engage in the problematic of color, sometimes aided by innovative technology, while in some cases the classical medium persists (Adrian Schiess, Pascal Pinaud, Cédric Teisseire, Marc Chevalier, Emmanuel Régent, Eve Pietruschi, Cynthia Lemesle & Jean-Philippe Roubaud, Arnaud Maguet, Jean-Baptiste Ganne, Ludovic Lignon, Julien Bouillon, Xavier Theunis…).
The journey through the rooms is organized according to a selection of about 90 works by 53 artists, with the scenography executed by the Atelier Marc Barani.
