Claude Viallat (1936) — Composition

Composition
Acrylic on canvas.
157 x 67 cm

ClaudeViallat: Painting, outside the frame 

Claude Viallat (b. 1936, Nîmes) is a French painter whose work occupies a singularplace in the history of contemporary abstraction. Co-founder of the Supports/Surfaces movement in the late 1960s, he developed a profound reflection on the very foundations of painting: its materials, gestures and formats. 
Trained at the Beaux-Arts in Montpellier and then in Paris, Viallat soon distanced himself from traditional painting. Influenced by the theoretical debates of the time, notably around American abstraction (such as color field painting) and minimalism, he challenged the conventions of the stretched canvas, figurative composition and even the idea of the image. 
From 1966 onwards, he adopted a repetitive, non-narrative motif, a simple form -somewhere between a bone, a drop or an imprint - which he declined ad infinitum, in variations of color, rhythm and support. Rejecting the painting as a finished object, he paints on loose canvases, often salvaged (sheets, tarpaulins, industrial canvas), suspended or hung unframed. This process frees painting from its frontality and illusionism, turning it into a living, physical, mobile surface.
From 1969 onwards, Viallat participated in the dynamic Supports/Surfaces group, which explored the material dimensions of the pictorial gesture, in conjunction with political and theoretical concerns. Although the group soon disbanded, Viallat continued his demanding research independently, in a constant relationship to color, rhythm and repetition. Far from spectacular or narrative effects, his work questions painting for its own sake, in its relationship to space, the body and fabric. He exhibits regularly in France and abroad, and has a dedicated room at Montpellier's Musée Fabre. In1982, he represented France at the Venice Biennale.
Now based in Nîmes, his work is marked by a rare fidelity to his initial principles, but also by a renewed freedom of composition. Claude Viallat has built up a coherent and singular body of work, on the bangs of fashion, while rigorously questioning the very nature of the act of painting.

Discover more works by this artist on the gallery's website: https://www.galeriepentcheff.fr/fr/peintre-claude-viallat#Oeuvres