Courtesy MAK edition
Geneviève CLAISSE
(1935 – 2018)
Geneviève Claisse’s work is a rigorous exploration of abstraction, which began in 1958 when the artist became part of the Abstraction-Création group established by Auguste Herbin. In 1965, she deepened her work into color, and it was around this time that she began to break away from the influence of Herbin and Piet Mondrian. Triangle and circle, treated as autonomous elements, became her formal vocabulary, and introduced kinetic research applied to surfaces. Her paintings then shifted into a more pure and simple register, in terms of both form and color choice, parallel to the growth of Op and Kinetic Art.
In 1961, Geneviève Claisse’s first solo show was held at the Galerie Denise René in Paris, where she has since been exhibiting regularly. In 1967, the Muséedes Beaux-Arts de La Chaux-de-Fond (Switzerland) exhibited works created during the previous decade. In 1989 and 2015, retrospectives were organized by the Musée Matisse in Cateau-Cambresis. Claisse’s work is held in the collections of the FRAC-Ile de France, LaM (Villeneuve d’Ascq), Musées des Beaux-Arts (Lausanne, La Chaux de Fonds), and the MCA (Chicago), among others.
Galerie Bertrand Grimont (Paris)