About the artwork
From a composition on the verge of abstraction, colorful avian figures stand out. While the image of a bird is easily discernible on the left-hand side of the work, we can also discern two beak-like shapes sprouting from the bottom of the work, giving rhythm to the composition. The colors, characteristic of nature, are both vivid and soothing. Combined with the image of the bird, they evoke the sensitive, natural world in a breath of freedom and peace. In this way, Hervé Télémaque creates a dialogue between the abstract and the figurative in this sensitive composition, whose stylized forms are enough to express a poetic fiction.
Expert opinion
Considered one of the founders of figuration narrative, alongside Ivan Messac and Gérard Fromanger, Hervé Télémaque's work contributed to the creation of a new French expressivity in the wake of May 68. Hervé Télémaque's work is a perfect illustration of this new aesthetic through its poetics and the fictions it inspires.
About the artist
Born in 1937 in Port-au-Prince (Haiti) and died in 2022, Hervé Télémaque was a French artist associated with surrealism and narrative figuration in the 1960s. In 1957, he moved from Haiti to New York, then dominated by Abstract Expressionism. He finally settled in Paris in 1961, co-founding the narrative figuration movement in reaction to the prevailing abstract tendencies. So, while his early paintings were resolutely abstract, his later work blends everyday objects and colored forms in complex, sensitive and sometimes caustic compositions. Indeed, his work is also imbued with strong political, anti-colonial and anti-racist commitments inherited from Haitian history and its confrontation with American racial segregation. In 2006, Hervé Télémaque was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, and his work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions around the world, including at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2015, the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2021 and the Aspen Art Museum in 2023.
“You say narration because I'm supposed, according to the history books, to be one of the founders of narrative figuration in 1964. But I don't like the word "narration". I prefer "fiction", which is a less simple, less short notion. I prefer to keep the meaning open, without falling into the rebus, which I don't like as much as narrative.”
Additional info
Signed
Dated
Framed
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