Georges Mathieu
“Georges Mathieu’s revival has begun” was the headline in “Le Figaro” on 24 September 2018. Georges Mathieu (1921-2012), a crucial artist of the ‘40s and ‘50s, the inventor of “lyrical abstraction”, one of the protagonists of international Art Informel, even anticipating Pollock with some works of the ‘40s, is about to achieve the position he deserves among the great masters. As confirmation of this, the Perrotin gallery, together with Namhad Contemporary, has purchased his heritage, and they are set to stage an international relaunching of his work, as already happened with Hans Hartung. After years in which his work was not exactly on the crest of the wave, this French artist, the author of a rapid, precise type of abstract painting, is about to receive his due recognition.
Mathieu’s painting mostly consists of rapid squiggles, as if the artist were a swordsman striking with precision, or as if he were tracing Japanese haikus made up of very few ideograms. The thicker, blurred lines are often associated with thin lines generally produced by directly squeezing the tube. The nervy twitches and the stabs create explosions, electric sparks, as if the pictorial magma throbbed with an intrinsic energy. Mathieu’s historic masterpieces have reached important values, even exceeding one and a half million euros for the works of the ‘50s. But international attention is now beginning to be focused on all of his production.
