Unfolding Jean Degottex: Plis and Déplis (1979-1980)

Bienvenu Steinberg & C is honored to present the first New York gallery exhibition of French artist Jean Degottex (1918 - 1988). Considered a major artist of the abstraction movement in the second half of the twentieth century, Degottex is known for his initial proximity with the lyrical abstraction movement. Early on, he was endorsed by André Breton who presented his spare calligraphic canvases as a logical development of the Surrealist practice of automatic writing. Degottex followed a singular path, where rigor never takes precedence over sensitivity. Like his generational peer, Simon Hantaï and his younger colleagues in Supports/Surfaces, Degottex privileged modes of pictorial production that directly engaged the materiality of the painterly support. He received the Kandinsky Prize in 1951 and the French National Painting Prize in 1981. His works are present in numerous public collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; City of Paris Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Gutai Pinacoteca, Osaka; Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka; Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; and Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota. The exhibition features nine paintings from 1979-1980 and a significant body of unstretched works on canvas. The exhibition underlines the emergence in Degottex’s practice of pliage and collage as key means of generating lines without drawing them in, displacing gesture into the physical manipulation and layering of supports. Mainly monochromatic, in hues of whites and light browns, some works include lines and corners painted with a radiant blue pigment reminiscent of Matisse's late cutouts.

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