Arman / Peinture Les années 90
About the exhibition
Arman is one of the leading artists of the New Realists group, whose movement—a reaction to postwar abstraction—emerged in the late 1950s as a “lyrical celebration of a new industrial and urban folklore,” in the words of art critic Pierre Restany.
Arman challenges consumer society. The object is at the heart of his concerns. It is both a byproduct and a symbol of it. His Accumulations, Colères, Calcinations, and Poubelles became his field of poetic activity.
Nevertheless, by the late 1950s, Arman had given painting a significant place in his work, using objects as brushes. It was from this process of imprinting that the Allures d’objets emerged, while his friend Yves Klein was creating Anthropométries by coating the bodies of his female models, whom he used as living brushes.
Building on and exploring this same idea, Arman developed in the 1990s a series of paintings on themes dear to him: accumulations of everyday objects, African fetishes—of which he was a collector—and portraits of Lenin.
It is these paintings that the Gallery will present from May 29 through July 20, along with two sculptures (Lenin and Venus) overrun with paintbrushes and tubes of paint.