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“Neither geometrism, nor abstract landscaping. Beautiful lyrical abstraction which draws its inspiration from the 1950s and has continually swelled its waters (…); strong convictions that no fashion can undermine.” Michel Ragon
A rare woman painter of Post-War Lyrical Abstraction, Huguette Arthur Bertrand was an active participant in the Parisian artistic scene, rubbing shoulders with Pierre Soulages, Gérard Schneider, Hans Hartung, Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh-Chun among others.
Huguette Arthur Bertrand participated in key exhibitions such as Les Mains éblouies [The Dazzled hands] at the Galerie Maeght (1949-1950) and exhibited regularly at the Salon de Mai and at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles.
Her volatile work, which is definitively abstract from 1950 on, spreads out on colored backgrounds with controlled gestures, tight graphics and narrow black streaks, to progressively freer gestures, that are initially intense and nervous, becoming more serene, summarized in subtle white lines towards the 1980s.
Huguette Arthur Bertrand’s art is specific to her, unique, devoid of any code: abstraction that is neither sign nor writing.
In the 1970s, wanting to infuse “a trembling of space” into her works, she created murals.
“A painting is not a staging but the natural trace of an action, an event that takes place.” Huguette Arthur Bertrand
“A painter of the dynamism of inner life, secret life with its outbursts and its retractions… a subtle and expressive colourist.” Michel Ragon
Aalborg (Denmark), Museum of Modern Art
Minneapolis, Walker Art Center
Paris, Musée national d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges-Pompidou
Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale
Paris, Mobilier national
Quebec, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Geneva, Fondation Gandur pour l’Art
Les Mains éblouies, Galerie Maeght, Paris, 1949 and 1950
Solo exhibition, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1957
La Escuela de Paris, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mexico, 1959
50 ans de collage, solo exhibition, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1964
Comparaison France-Japon, Grand Palais, Paris, 1992
L’Envolée lyrique, Paris 1945-1956, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2006
Les Sujets de l’abstraction, Peinture non-figurative de la Seconde École de Paris (1946-1962), Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Musée Rath, Geneva, 2011
Huguette Arthur Bertrand, catalogue monographique, Editions Galerie Diane de Polignac, avril 2012, 88 p.
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