Jean Pierre Pincemin

JEAN PIERRE PINCEMIN (Arcueil, France, 1944-2005).
"Fields of color", January 1979.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated on the back.
Measurements: 195 x 130 cm.

The importance of the work now on auction lies in the period in which it was made, as it belongs to a key moment of transition in Pincemin's career and the French Supports/Surfaces movement. In those years, he abandoned the most radical experimentations with industrial materials and dismantled structures to return to painting on canvas, while maintaining the reflection on matter, color and the construction of pictorial space. In it, the large bands of earthy color, black and red organized with an almost minimalist architecture reflect precisely this evolution: an apparently simple painting, but constructed with enormous formal rigor and an intense physical presence.

On a holistic level, this work encapsulates several fundamental influences of the late 1970s: American minimalism, the monochrome tradition, and European abstract research after Malevich and Rothko. Pincemin used stripes, borders and broad surfaces to question what a painting really is: not a representation of something, but an autonomous object made of color, support, texture and proportion.

By 1979, moreover, Pincemin was beginning to achieve international recognition with exhibitions in Paris, Switzerland and Denmark, and his paintings from this period are considered some of the most solid and balanced of his entire abstract output.

Jean-Pierre Pincemin was a French painter, printmaker and sculptor linked to the Supports/Surfaces movement, an artistic current that explored the materials and structure of painting itself. Born in Paris, he began working as a lathe operator in the mechanical industry before discovering art through his visits to the Louvre Museum. In the late 1960s he began to develop an experimental work based on abstraction, using unconventional materials such as metal mesh, boards, cardboard and folded fabrics. In 1971 he officially joined the Supports/Surfaces group, although he later evolved towards a more figurative and expressive painting, also incorporating polychrome wood sculptures. His work is characterized by a constant research on color, matter and pictorial space, becoming one of the most original figures of contemporary French art of his generation.