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Squaring the Square - Web Tour
Click the fotos to get enlargements.
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| When Morellet came as an autodidact to art around 1945, after a brief phase of more or less representational painting he very soon embarked on works typified by a marked geometrical austerity. Over the next 15 years he developed the fundamental rules of his art and devised a number of logical systems: juxtaposition – superimposition – interference – fragmentation - chance. Presented here in this gallery are a large number of early works whose compositions strictly obey a pre-determined system, including no small number of optically impressive all-over variations produced from superimposed lattice patterns. |
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| Already in 1963 Francois Morellet was one of the first artists anywhere to employ neon light in his works. Neon tubes blinking at different intervals enabled him to create works that could be set in a variety of states. As for instance the three-part work Néon avec programmation aléatoire-poétique-géométrique from 1967, in which the alternately lighting neon tubes not only create geometrical formations but also words such as “NUL”, “NON”, “CUL” and “CON”. |
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| During the 1970s Francois Morellet not only produced rigorously systematic works but, for the first time, works in which the artist questioned the foundations of geometry, such as stasis, strictness and mathematical precision. In these large compositions made up of a number of panels that extend round the space, the square picture form which as such appears stable and steady seems to totter as a restlessness emerges that infects the whole geometrical order. |
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| In his various series done in the 1990s, such as his Steel-lifes, the Free-vols and the Relâches, Francois Morellet explored geometrical forms in original and playful ways. The pure white picture surface – often the setting for a very economic array of metal rails, steel frames and neon tubes – has now turned completely into a stage for his witty ideas; as often as not, these are compositions that no longer “fit the normal picture”. |
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| In the 1980s Francois Morellet did a series of singular works with the richly associative title “Géométree” (French “géométrie” + Engl. “tree”). In these compositions the artist quite effortlessly combined biological materials in the form of naturally grown branches with artifice, and in this way demonstrated that there is no necessary contradiction between art and nature. |
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| The ground floor contains the latest works by Francois Morellet. Apart from large-scale installations with neon tubes, these consist above all of enormous paintings done over several panels. The majority of these works present jagged structures either in space or on the picture surface that generate themselves from a few pre-defined parameters. The angle relationship between the successive sections of the angles and lines are set according to the decimal numbers from the number PI (3.14159...) which Francois Morellet so often uses. At first sight these works have precious little to do with customary ideas of geometrical constructive art. |
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