Pierre Alechinsky

PIERRE ALECHINSKY (Brussels, 1927).
"Vue de la fenetre, 1815", 1979.
Etching, copy 57/60.
Signed, dated and justified by hand.
Measurements: 58.5 x 78.5 cm (paper); 81.5 x 99.5 cm (frame).

Pierre Alechinsky had founded with Karel Appel and other artists the group CoBrA in the fifties. The desire to overthrow the rationalism and purism that had dominated certain avant-garde currents is maintained in the work that Alechinsky developed in the following decades. The aggressiveness of the gesture, the fiery palette, the violent stroke and the rejection of realism are searches to which Alechinsky remains faithful in this engraving of 1979. The Belgian artist used to choose titles that referred to states of the soul or abstract concepts and that, with the symbolism of color, texture and impetuous gestures, he translated into subjugating compositions such as the one we are dealing with.

A lithographer, painter and theorist, Pierre Alechinsky trained at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture et des Arts Décoratifs de la Cambre in Brussels, showing both talent and interest in illustration and typography. In 1945 he discovered the work of Michaux, Dubuffet and the surrealists, at which time he also became friends with the art critic Jacques Putman. He began painting in 1947, beginning a career that would mix certain characteristics of Expressionism with others of Surrealism, both accompanied by a very personal style. In the late 1940s he met the poet Christian Dotremont, one of the founding members of the CoBrA group (an acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam), and Alechinsky joined the group in 1949. Along with Alechinsky, the group included Karel Appel, Christian Dotremont and Asger Jorn, among others. He also participated in the group's first international exhibition in Amsterdam and collaborated on canvases with Karel Appel and other members. After the dissolution of CoBrA, Alechinsky moved to Paris, where he experimented with printmaking at the popular Atelier 17. There he met Giacometti, Bram van Velde and Victor Brauner. In 1954 he had his first solo exhibition at the Nina Dausset Gallery in Paris, where he was able to meet the painter Walasse Ting, who was to exert an important influence on him. In 1956 he made "Central Park", an acrylic painting that included "marginal observations", leitmotif in much of his production. The first retrospective of his work took place in 1969, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. In 1966, André Breton chose this piece for the international exhibition of the surrealist movement. His work has been exhibited in Amsterdam, London, the Venice Biennale, New York, etc., and is kept in important private collections and institutions such as the Marion Lefebre Collection in Los Angeles, the Galerie Leolong in Paris, the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the MoMA, etc.