Lot 151
  • 151

JEAN FAUTRIER | Chipie

Estimate
250,000 - 350,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Jean Fautrier
  • Chipie
  • signed and dated 55
  • oil and pastel on plaster on card laid down on canvas
  • 73 by 54 cm. 28 3/4 by 21 1/4 in.

Provenance

Sami Tarica, Paris
A gift from the above to the present owner

Exhibited

Cologne, Galerie Thomas Borgmann; Hambourg, Galerie Nuendorf, Jean Fautrier, Ölbilder 1925-1959, October - December 1976, n.p., no. 10, illustrated in colour
Lugano, Musée Cantonal, Da Kandinsky à Pollock la Vertigine Della Non-Forma, November 2001 - January 2002, p. 121, illustrated in colour

Literature

Palma Bucarelli, Jean Fautrier Pittura e Materia, Verona 1960, p. 330, no. 228, illustrated
Yves Peyré, Fautrier ou les Outrages de l'Impossible, Paris 1990, p. 259, illustrated in colour

Condition

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is slightly lighter and brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals some light wear with associated rub marks along the edges as well as some small losses to the paper to both upper and lower right corner tips and to the centre of the upper edge. Further close inspection reveals a few hairline cracks in isolated places which are in keeping with the artist's choice of media. There is a minute media accretion towards the lower edge, approximately 15 cm from the left edge. Extremely close inspection reveals a minute and unobtrusive speck of superficial loss to the lower right centre of the figure. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals a few spots of irregular fluorescence which does not appear to be restoration.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

Jean Fautrier's Chipie is a superlative work belonging to the corpus of paintings succeeding the Otages (Hostages); the body of work which truly cemented the artist's reputation as a formidable and important practitioner. Representing a remarkable conflation of abstract lyricism and intense melancholia, the present work stands as a truly stunning response to human embodiment and experience in the post-war period. Executed in 1955, Chipie can be read as a precursor to Fautrier’s later Hostages paintings; a theme he revisited following The Hungarian Revolution in 1956, in which thousands of Partisans were massacred and hundreds of thousands more fled as refugees. In repudiating the canon of cool geometric abstraction with its detachment from immediate reality, Fautrier and Art Informel opened an artistic dialogue entrenched in visceral materiality and directly tied to raw human experience. In the present work, the thickly textured suggestion of a head lays prostrate and powerless; the hieroglyphs of suffering baring the trace of a fractured and scarred corporeality. The ovoid structure occupying the centre of the picture plane is rendered in fleshy tones, surrounded by a sea of diluted azure. Via his developed technique of Haute Pâte or Matter Painting, Fautrier conjures a direct sensory and physical experience, a reality founded in material tension. Strongly influenced by Art Brut and together with artists such as Jean Dubuffet and Wols, Fautrier pursued an improvisatory methodology and highly gestural technique freed from the conventions of classical easel painting.

The technique was achieved by a rejection of canvas painting; instead Fautrier worked the Haute Pâte onto paper which would then be laid on canvas using a spatula. As outlined by the artist: "The canvas is now merely a support for the paper. The thick paper is covered with sometimes thick layers of a plaster – the picture is painted on this moist paper – this plaster makes the paint adhere to the paper perfectly – it has the virtue of fixing the colours in powder, crushed pastels, gouache, ink, and also oil paint – it is above all thanks to these coats of plaster that the mixture can be produced so well and the quality of the matter is achieved" (Jean Fautrier cited in: Karen Butler, 'Fautrier's First Critics: André Malrauz, Jean Paulhan and Francis Ponge', London 2002, pp. 43-44). It is to this end that Fautrier considered himself a sculptor rather than a painter, carving and moulding his teasingly tangible surfaces to achieve spectral luminosity and raw presence.

Through a mournful testament to the worst betrayals of mankind, the poetic relation between the thick crackled strata and the delicate pastel tones posit Chipie as among the most poignantly elegant of Fautrier's distinguished oeuvre.