*Georges MATHIEU (1921-2012) [FRANCE] - Lot 59

*Georges MATHIEU (1921-2012) [FRANCE] Banished Nights, circa 1987 Acrylic and watercolor on paper. Signed lower right. 57 x 76.5 cm Provenance (presumed) Sale, Me Ionesco, Neuilly sur Seine, November 22, 1988, lot 269. Sale, Me Rey-Faure, Rambouillet, October 1, 1989, Sale, Me Loudmer, Paris, February 18, 1990. Sale, Me Aguttes, Paris, October 7, 2002, lot 264. This work is listed among the authentic works in the "Archives Jean-Marie Cusinberche sur Georges Mathieu" (certificate dated July 8, 2022 by Marc Ottavi). After the war, Georges Mathieu launched the Abstraction Lyrique movement, a visual language that privileged form over content and gesture over intention. Convinced of the need to create happier harmonies between man and his environment, he asserts that one of the artist's major duties towards the city is to transform his "language" into "style". After 1985, pictorial ideograms became more autonomous in Mathieu's work, with the central composition gradually disappearing in favor of a distribution of signs over the entire surface of the work. Malraux, who admired the artist, said: "At last a Western calligrapher! Nuits bannies (Banned Nights) is characterized by virtuoso calligraphy applied with long brushes, to which are added impastos of material, straight from the tube and applied to the paper. Spontaneity, immediacy and speed of execution guarantee the total creative freedom by which Georges Mathieu defines his work.