Suzanne Rodillon (1916-1988) - Abstract Composition, 1959

Suzanne Rodillon (1916-1988)
Abstract composition, 1959
Mixed technique - collage of gouache cut paper, needles
Signed and dated “59” in the lower left
Dimensions of the work: 25 x 21.5 cm
Dimensions of the original frame: 38 x 35 cm

Artist painter born in 1916, Suzanne Rodillon, intimidating and eccentric beauty, evolves in the Parisian artistic environment of the 1950s. Her contemporaries describe her as a whimsical and extravagant woman, "loud in mouth, loud in laughter" *. She was close to the surrealists and then frequented the founders of the CoBrA group, including the Danish Asger Jorn. This post-war pictorial movement was born in Paris in 1948 in reaction to the quarrel between abstraction and figuration. The artists who compose it wish to produce an art freed from Western norms and conventions while being inspired by artistic forms stemming from primitive and exotic cultures (totems, oriental calligraphy, prehistoric and medieval art etc.).

From her first solo exhibition in 1956, the work of Suzanne Rodillon was recognized and praised by critics. The writer and art critic Alain Jouffroy evokes his work in these flattering terms: "this work seems to me one of the most curious examples of personal research that we are currently witnessing in Paris".

From 1958, a series of prestigious collective exhibitions followed one another, in Japan with Roberto Matta and Max Ernst, in France, Italy and England. His original and enigmatic works arouse the enthusiasm of the public as well as enlightened amateurs (Peggy Guggenheim) and poets of his time (Jean Paulhan and Jacques Prévert) who do not hide their admiration for the artist.

Suzanne Rodillon indeed sets up a singular plastic language privileging the expression without establishing, in its beginnings, a sharp border between abstraction and figuration and which one will sometimes qualify as abstract expressionism.

The strange and mysterious art of Suzanne Rodillon is nourished by African and Oceanian cultures which she has approached closely. The works on paper that we offer bear witness to the originality of his writing, strong and personal, sometimes evoking anthropomorphic subjects, sometimes a mythical, even primitive bestiary. She frees herself from all stylistic formalism, going so far as to introduce metallic needles into the heart of her glued papers.

These works from the 1950s are part of an intense period of creation which will last ten years before, for personal and family reasons, the artist permanently sets down his brushes in 1967 and turns his works against the walls of his studio. that she will close so that she never returns.