Venet's drawing
Bernar VENET, a French artist born in 1941 and living between France and the United States since the 1960s, is today known worldwide for his sculptures and recognised for his monumental installations in the public domain.
We would like to focus here on another part of his compositions: his graphic work. We will base this article on two works on paper recently acquired by the gallery, which perfectly illustrate the importance of drawing in the sculptor’s creative process.
Bernar VENET – Two Undetermined Lines, 1989 – Oil pastels on paper – 76.2 x 76.2 cm
“First, I have a vision. Then I make a small drawing with the main precaution being the question of proportions “.
From his first artistic experiences, Bernar VENET gives the drawing a predominant and omnipresent place. From mathematical formulas written with ink on large papers, to industrial technical diagrams presenting the physical characteristics of an object produced and shown at the same time in volume, Venet’s graphic works are inseparable from his sculptures.
Like many artists, drawing is the first stage in Bernar Venet’s work and he will build his sculptural project through it. Moreover, the sculptor can be felt behind each of the artist’s sketches: the relief and perspectives make each drawing a wall sculpture. The flat work seems to be already present in volume, it seems to come out of its frame. Here, the preparatory drawing is not a sketch but a fully-fledged, finished work that stands on its own and presents us with the essence of the subject to which Venet will give life. The movement, relief, texture and colours of the pastel give us the grainy, rusty aspect of the Corten steel that will constitute the material of the sculpture to be born. The attention is already entirely concentrated on the form, no superfluous detail disturbs the eye. Ingres gave this advice to his students: “Have the figure you want to represent entirely in your eyes and in your mind, and let the execution be nothing more than the accomplishment of this already possessed and preconceived image”. With a lively, sober, powerful and elegant gesture, Venet goes straight to his goal, follows his Line, a central element of his work since the 1960s, the volume of which he already feels, and remains faithful to what he calls the principle of equivalence, which makes it possible to transmit the same content through different channels.
The second stage is the casting of the sculpture in black or Corten steel according to the drawing. Then, in a third step, the artist will try to give yet another vision of his work, this time from a photographic view of his sculpture.
In Venet’s case, there is an absolute circularity between drawing, sculpture and photography. The form and its metaphors are contiguous and reflect the artist’s desire to achieve the absolute object, one whose aspect refers only to itself without expressiveness, totally neutral, depersonalised. This was already the aim of Bernar Venet during his first artistic experiments based on the use of diagrams and mathematical formulas, or also through his performance around the “coal pile”: “The charcoal, placed freely in a heap, freed the sculpture from the apriorities of the composition imposed by the artist. The material, always poor (coal, tar, steel…), used for its own capacities, decides on its own form which will be different with each use, thus allowing the artist’s personality to disappear behind his work. Through the raw and industrial materials he chooses, Venet further emphasises the radical and self-referential nature of his research: the work must speak only of itself and not of the artist. It is on this monosemia principle that he has based his thinking since the beginning.
Bernar VENET – Indeterminate Line, 2016 – Photograph and charcoal on paper – 220 x 153 cm
This Indeterminate Line, created in 2016, is entirely representative of the style and strength of Venet’s work: at once minimal and monumental, even colossal, the line takes over the space with its presence and movement. Here we are faced with what could be described as the third stage of his work: after the preparatory drawing and the making of the sculpture, the artist seeks to give another vision of this volume. He then chooses an angle of view which he fixes photographically and reworks into a flat. The photo is then cut out following the contours of the sculptural form, pasted onto a large white paper and reworked with charcoal. This tool, made from charcoal (well, look at that…), used since prehistoric times in cave art, which is as raw as it gets, is generally associated with preliminary work because it is very easily erased. Here again, Venet goes against the grain. He glorifies charcoal through its use in the final work. The specific characteristics of charcoal allow him to add depth to his work and to play with light by varying the value of the black, more or less blurred. The rough and raw texture of charcoal can also recall the feel of steel. And the circle is complete!
«Expanding the field of the visual world»
Bernar Venet became an artist at a time when lyrical abstraction was exploding in France and conceptual art in the United States. He did not adhere to these movements and sought something else to broaden the field of creation. He therefore found his inspiration elsewhere, in disciplines outside the art world such as mathematics, geometry and physics.
His work will develop around a theme: the Line, which will become straight, curved, indeterminate before being transformed into Arcs and Angles. From the outset, his work was radical, even austere, compared to the generally lyrical and colourful abstract art of the 1960s. Using black and industrial materials, with a minimal and deliberately inexpressive gesture, he wanted to achieve the absolute object, one whose form would refer only to itself and not to the artist’s “style”. He remained faithful to the initial principles of his creation (principle of equivalence, refusal of aesthetics and monosemia principle) on which he based a protean work: paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, architecture, poetry, sound works, films…
A major artist of conceptual and minimal art, the father of informal art born with his “coal pile “, Bernar VENET is today present in some sixty museums throughout the world and receives numerous public and private commissions for permanent and often monumental installations.
Maud Barral
After 15 years spent as the assistant of the famous gallerist Jean Ferrero, whose gallery has been the main center of creation for the artists of the School of Nice and the Nouveaux-Réalistes movements, Maud has then opened for 5 years her own gallery, supporting contemporary young artists. Then, she has decided to enter the Galerie Hurtebize, in 2015.
MODERNE ART FAIR - The Gallery is back in the Parisian fairs
Dear Friends, Dear Collectors,
After almost two years without a fair, we are really impatient to come and meet you in Paris for our participation in MODERNE ART FAIR, a fair that replaces ART ELYSEES which we have been following for more than 10 years. It is therefore out of loyalty, but also to make up for the lack of our Parisian contacts, that we are back on the art scene of our dear capital.
These last months, frustrated by not being able to participate or organize events abroad, we have taken advantage of this flexibility in our schedule to take a more serious interest in the Contemporary Art market. We remain faithful to our passions and attached to the purchase and sale of major works by artists of the 1950s and will present from 21 to 25 October paintings by Jean-Michel ATLAN, Bernard BUFFET, André MARFAING, Georges MATHIEU, Jean MIOTTE … artists who have made the reputation of our gallery.
Also, we will hang on these temporary walls our contemporary favourites, some already known and recognized internationally and others that we wish to make you discover : ABOUDIA, LEE Bae, Julien COLOMBIER, Jan KOLATA, Michel MOUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques MARIE …
This year, we will also devote a part of our stand to the presentation of works on paper of great signatures. Drawings by Joan MIRÒ, Henri MICHAUX, CHU Teh-Chun and Serge POLIAKOFF, acquired from private collections and accompanied by certificates of authenticity from approved experts, will enable you to appreciate the finesse of the line or the mastery of the colours of these artists and to consider the work on paper as a work in its own right and not as a preparatory study.
This new selection offers us the possibility of presenting quality works adapted to all types of budget. Do you want to buy a work of art at a low price or do you want to think about a financial investment? We are here to guide you, advise you and meet your expectations.
We look forward to seeing you on the Champs-Elysées, a stone’s throw from the Grand Palais Ephémère and the FIAC, to present our latest acquisitions and to see you again!
Maud Barral
After 15 years of experience working with Jean Ferrero, director of the historic gallery of the École de Nice and the Nouveaux Réalistes, Maud then defended the young contemporary creation for 5 years, within her own gallery, before joining the Hurtebize Gallery team in 2015.
Aboudia, a committed artist and spokesperson for the youth of Abidjan
From Abidjan to Brooklyn
Abdoulaye Diarrasouba aka ABOUDIA was born in 1983 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He became a painter, against the advice of his parents and teachers who predicted a career as a “Tagger”. In 2003, he graduated́ from the Centre d’Art Technique des Arts Appliqués in Bingerville.
Aboudia was spotted in 2011 by critics for his works that bear witness to the violence in Ivory Coast during the civil war and the numerous riots that took place after the presidential elections. His works are distributed throughout the world thanks to the photographs taken by Finbar O’Reilly for Reuters, and are very quickly exhibited at the Jack Bell gallery in London in 2012 and at the Cécile Fakhoury gallery in Abidjan in 2013, where he collaborates notably with the Ivorian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré. His presence in the exhibition “Pangea II: New Art From Africa and Latin America” at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2014 exposed him alongside an emerging generation of young African and South American artists. His work is frequently shown in solo exhibitions in Abidjan, London, New York, Paris and Dakar. He created the Aboudia Foundation in Bingerville in 2018 to support children and young artists.
Aboudia’s work can be found in numerous collections, including the Saatchi Gallery in London, the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, USA, and the Tiroche DeLeon collection in Israel.
His last public sale record was in March 2021 at Christie’s in London. A work from 2013 was sold for 189,000 euros.
Today he lives between Asu (his home town) and Brooklyn.
The foundation of his style and technique
He began by working on large canvases measuring 3 x 4 metres. He continues to distinguish himself by creating monumental formats of 30, 60 meters.
He defines his style as urban, “street art that speaks of graffiti“. Influenced by the graffiti of Abidjan and the traditional statues of West Africa, he is naturally compared to Jean-Michel Basquiat. The famous artist also uses the term “Noutchy”, which refers to the combination of several Ivory Coast languages and French, to characterise his work. His art is a bridge between contemporary Western aesthetics and the problems of a changing African society.
In his work, which has a strong biographical and protest content, he reveals a poor facet of Abidjan with its modest neighbourhoods, far from the idealised images of Africa. His greatest source of inspiration are the children of the disadvantaged neighbourhoods of the Ivorian capital who have not had an education and dream of better days. The subject matter of his work focuses mainly on this theme because he considers children and education to be the pillars of a nation. He says that it was while walking down the Treichville district in Abidjan that he observed children expressing themselves on the walls by making graffiti. He watches this little boy who wants to be a doctor, drawing himself with a white coat. Another little girl who dreams of being an actress immerses herself in her imagination by drawing a scene from a film. This is how he creates his identity, by borrowing the writing of these children with this naive and colourful gesture full of vitality and energy. He puts himself in the shoes of a 5 year old child to create and uses materials such as cardboard, charcoal or even chalk, to remain close to the reality of these children and respect their history.
Copyright : Mobio Hermann Apohi, photographer based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast – https://www.abidjangraffiti.com
A cosmopolitan artist, he constructs his work as an anti-violence manifesto with very few technical means. He acts as a spokesman for the deprived youth of Abidjan and highlights their cause through his work while asking fundamental questions about the nature of the world.
“If we decide to wage war, why can’t we decide to make peace and help people sleeping in the street? We have that power. What is wrong with this world? That’s the question I’m asking myself and I’d like to find the answer.” 2
Copyright : Mobio Hermann Apohi, photographer based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast – https://www.abidjangraffiti.com
He also sees art as a way to bring people together.
“Art is something that travels, brings together all social classes.” 3
Copyright : Mobio Hermann Apohi, photographer based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast – https://www.abidjangraffiti.com
A series of three works can be seen on the gallery's walls
The Hurtebize Gallery has the will to diversify and to propose a new palette of international contemporary artists. This change of direction will focus on several areas, including African artists and a return to figurative art. Aboudia, a young up-and-coming artist in full explosion, is representative of this movement and was a real favourite for the gallery. We have included a series of three square works in orange that can be seen on our walls. These works mix techniques where paintings, pastels, collages as well as materials found in the street are superimposed to represent scenes of life in the Abidjan neighbourhoods. Characters drawn with thick pastel strokes cover shreds of magazine pages and other elements to catch the eye of the viewer.
At the centre of his discourse are worried faces witnessing a dark urban chaos that occupy almost the entire composition. What is striking is the brutal and violent reality of Africa that his works show, which contrasts with the vitality and cheerfulness that emanate from his art.
“Through colour I illustrate the vitality of these children. I treat a negative subject with joie de vivre, colour and enthusiasm. 4
Aboudia’s works will be presented at the Moderne Art Fair, a new event that replaces Art Élysées, from 21 to 25 October in Paris.
Céline Fernandez
With 14 years of experience in marketing and communication, Céline has worked for large companies such as Public Système, Groupe Galerie Lafayette and several communication agencies. For the past 2 years, she has been managing the gallery's communication through the website, social networks and traditional media.