Pierre Fichet (1927-2007) Lot n° 55

Composition (bloody painting series) circa 1968 Oil on canvas signed on the back 27 x 22 cm Provenance: > Acquired directly from the artist > Collection M. et Mme X > Private collection, Paris Condition report: Framed Pierre Fichet, a member of the École de Paris, is a painter of lyrical abstraction - his first abstract work dates from 1947. In his own words: "In 1952... there were about three or four Parisian galleries willing to exhibit works by abstract painters. All the others, and there were a great many of them, refused these scabby artists, who at best were described as 'decorators'. This hatred brought us an advantage: anyone who saw the profession of painter as a way of making a career and getting rich by selling his work, gave up being an abstract. [...] we'll see a host of painters convert; it's always like that, I think, but at the time, you had to believe in it to persist." His first exhibition was held at the Maison des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1952, and he began exhibiting abstract canvases at the Galerie Arnaud in 1954. He took part in numerous group and solo shows, and in 1959 became an observer member of the GIAP, where he rubbed shoulders with Yona Friedman and Nicolas Schöffer. His work can be found in the collections of many museums, including Beaubourg, the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse... "...Greater freedom of gesture and lyrical imagination of pictorial expanse... Rhythmic integration is complete, the space arranged in its totality. Fichet's art, escaping systematic cut-outs and the effects of successive planes, gains in intensity and depth." Pierre Restany