François Morellet (1926 - 2016)
Since 1989, the Musée du Louvre and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux have entrusted contemporary artists with the task of producing engraved plates for the Chalcographie, which is responsible for the exclusive printing of the plates, with no limit on the number of prints.
Very different trends in contemporary art are represented. Geneviève Asse rubs shoulders with Georg Baselitz, Pierre Courtin, Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Pat Steir, Jean-Michel Alberola, Robert Morris, Louise Bourgeois, Markus Raetz, Pierre Alechinsky or Agathe May.
Since 1950, François Morellet has been painting in a stripped-down style, inspired by Mondrian, adopting simple shapes (lines, squares, triangles) assembled in compositions of restrained, flat colors. His work plays with shapes through superimposition, fragmentation, juxtaposition and so on. Puns and humor are always present, as in this work with strong undertones: Bandes à part. For this commission from the Louvre, Morellet took as his starting point a series initiated in 2005, Streep-teasing or Débandade, made up of intersecting horizontal, vertical and diagonal stripes. The composition, simple at first glance, has a complex geometry. Nine lines are drawn on the square pattern of the print, itself divided into four equal squares. Fine lines appear in two squares. They continue in the other two squares among forty small lines, generating broad bands.
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