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Pierre
Alechinsky was born in Brussels in 1927. From 1944 to 1948, he studied
typography, photography, and printing and illustration techniques at the Ecole
nationale dâarchitechure et des arts décoratifs de la Cambre in Brussels. In
1945, he discovered the work of Michaux, of Dubuffet, and of the Surrealists,
and becomes friends with the critic and art dealer Jacques Putman. His first personal
exposition took place in 1947. Then in 1949 he met Dotremont and became a
member of the Cobra movement in the same year, joining artists Asger Jorn and
Karel Appel; he became one of the most productive members. The movement held an
importance for him as much on a personal level as an ideological one:
uninhibited spontaneity in art, the rejection of pure abstraction, and a
refusal to specialize. After the
dissolution of the Cobra group, whose spirit he would continue to foster (âCobra
is my schoolâ, he would say), Pierre Alechinsky moved to Paris. He finished his
training as an engraver and introduced new techniques to Atelier 17, directed
by Stanley William Hayter. It is during this same time beginning in 1952 that
he became friends with Alberto Giacometti, Bram Van Velde, Wallace Ting, and
that he began correspondence with the Japanese calligrapher Shiryu Morita de
Kyoto. He progressively abandons oil painting for quicker and lore supple
materials, such as ink, that allowed him freer reign over his fluid and
sensitive style. Fascinated by oriental calligraphy, whose spontaneity
attracted him, he undertook several trips to the Orient and in Kyoto made a
documentary film on traditional Japanese art. Beginning
in the 1960s, Alechinsky began making frequent visits to New York, where he
discovered a technique that suited him well â acrylic painting, introduced to
him by Wallace Ting. The same year, he created his most famous work, âCentral
Parkâ, with which he inaugurates painting âwith notes in the marginsâ inspired
by comic books, where the central image is surrounded by a series of hand-drawn
vignettes designed to complete the sense of the painting. Passionate
about books, he illustrated poems and texts for writers including Cioran,
Butor, Yves Bonnefoy, André Frénaud, Tardieu, etc, and published several works.
In 1983 Alechinsky became a professor of painting at the Ecole Nationale
Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. Since the 1980s, the artist has pursued his
graphic research across a wide variety of media. It is in this same period that
he gained access to the public order (Palais Bourbon, Hall du Ministère des
Finances, etc). Expositions and retrospectives recognize him internationally,
museums as well as galleries welcoming his work across the world entire. He
lives and works in Bougival. |