Gérard GAROUSTE (1946) [FRANCE] - Lot 65

Gérard GAROUSTE (1946) [FRANCE] Untitled, 1989 Gouache on paper. Signed and dated 3.6.89/2 lower left. 45 x 62.5 cm Exhibition : Cologne, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, October 1989 (Label on back of framing mount). In 1988, the Fondation Cartier presented Gérard Garouste's "Les Indiennes", a series of large painted canvases created in 1988 and inspired by a reading of Dante's Divine Comedy. Arranged in a dynamic pattern and combining with the masses of architecture, the Indiennes invite the viewer on a meditative journey, transforming space into pictorial scenes, resonating with the texts from which they draw their inspiration. Our work is clearly close to this theatrical inspiration. The canvases produced from 1986 onwards already mark a stylistic turning point for the artist, who now tends towards an "abstraction" of the figures. Against a backdrop of colors, the figures stand out like beings at once impalpable and strangely present, an effect that is both optical and tactile. The slender forms resemble sculptures with streamlined profiles. Garouste has returned to more figurative figures, paradoxically to distort and distort their bodies even more, mixing them with objects or plants, creating hybrid beings who wander in search of a lost reality.