[ back to main page 'George Mathieu' ]

wildbrush's art.to.day - you entered the world of my preferred painters -

George Mathieu • about the artist -

George Mathieu was born 27. January 1921, in Verseau, France.

The practitioners of the artist movement "L'art Informel" could only hope to survive this period when they retained the capacity for change and further development. One of these artists who recognised the problem early on was George Mathieu. He stated: 'the so-called avant-garde is basically only a work-out and statement of new forms, a short time before these become part of a tradition.' Mathieu worked in a spectacular (and speculative) action as a 'quick-sketch' artist. Many critiques said that he had stepped into Dali's shoes and had adopted Dali's irrationalism. Mathieu appeared in bizarre costumes and his extremely effective and telegenic demonstrations sometimes recalled circus performance. In this performances he attacked huge canvases up to 10 meters and more in length. His movements were similar to a fencer when he threw his whole body into the painting process.

For him the pure act of painting was more important than many other things. 'it is interesting and very exciting'. And to share his excitement he often performed in front of a big audience even in television studios from where his style of painting was broadcasted - action painting in it's pure form. Mathieu demonstrated that painting itself had become the subject of painting. The flows of paint and his brushstrokes had become its 'content'. Also concurrently Action Painting developed in the United States.

Mathieu said his style of art is to be understood as 'lyrical abstraction'. Parts in his paintings seems to be similar to Far-East calligraphic pictographs. His use of brushes was dynamic and purely dramatic, even theatrical in nature.

When I saw Mathieu's paintings for the very first time I have had a feeling that they reminded me on something 'Dali-esque' but I did not found soon the answer. In further research I found out: it was Dali's style to apply his signature which made me thinking of a 'Dali-esque' style. A combination of long harsh peaks and smooth curves. Although the paintings of Mathieu are extremely different from Dali's, in my opinion a touch of surrealism or at least it's influence is present in this highly energetic paintings.

The body of work which Mathieu produced during his artistic career has a greater range than only his action paintings. But for me it was more import to concentrate on that specific subject in my website which shows the artist's dramatically energy.

Quotation of Mathieu:

selected reading:

• George Mathieu, by Françoise Mathey,
© 1969/1989 Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri S.p.A., Milan
Cette édition est publiée en 1989 par CELIV, Paris;
ISBN 2-86535-084-3

• Art of the 20th Century, Volume 1, pages 256, 257
© 1998 Benedikt Taschen Verlag, Köln;
ISBN 3-8228-8576-2

galleries: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7



[ back to main page 'George Mathieu' ]  [[ inside his studio ]  [ about the artist ]

[ back to my preferred painters ]