The French artist Geneviève Claisse (* 1935) is a grande dame of geometrical abstraction. Right from the very outset of her career she has pursued an autonomous, non-representational form of painting. For this she received important impulses from Auguste Herbin, who she worked for as assistant in the 1950s. From then on a rigorously geometrical vocabulary with clearly delineated colour fields determined her work, which is dominated by triangles, sometimes circles, and later also squares and rectangles created from black linear formations. In her precisely executed paintings the artist, who now resides in Paris, has arrived at harmoniously balanced, dynamically rhythmic compositions with an arresting aesthetic.

This exhibition at Museum Ritter provided a broad panorama of Geneviève Claisse’s extensive painted oeuvre, from the late 1950s to the present day. Amongst numerous paintings presenting the different periods of her work, you will also see some geometric sculptures, reliefs and early sketchbooks of the artist. Some of them were shown for the first time at an exhibition. 


Exhibition Catalogue in German and English: Geneviève Claisse. Jenseits des weißen Quadrats. Deutsch-englisches Katalogbuch, Verlag Das Wunderhorn 2007, € 21,80

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Geneviève Claisse: Roche Corneille (Transparence/Plénitude), Teil eines Diptychons, 1995,  © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020
Geneviève Claisse: Drei Gouachen, 1958, 1957, 1957 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020