the 1er From July to September 2, 2023, the Galerie Catherine Issert in Saint-Paul de Vence is organizing the exhibition of Gérard Traquandi… Summer.
In the intimate spaces of a sketchbook or the vast, colorful expanses of a canvas, Gérard Traquandi recreates the impressions of nature and the fascination of landscapes. From July 1 to September 2, 2023, Galerie Catherine Issert offers the artist its spaces where he can weave his undulating reality through a very particular perspective: the perspective of summer. The southern summer, the summer of the South where his gaze was forged by painters, summer and its unique light, are transcribed here. The visual artist, who lives between Paris and Aix-en-Provence, declares that light must come from the painting and invites us to expose ourselves to it. Through a series of drawings, watercolors, paintings, and ceramics, the richness of his work reveals and testifies to his work as an alchemist, between the joy of representation and the breath of pure color, between technical mastery and the gamble of chance.
“…the purple of the mountains is exactly like the purple of the waves, and the tranquil August noon hovers over the deep meadows…” Herman Melville, The Veranda.
He allows himself to wander freely through the medium without renouncing his mastery. A leading figure in non-figurative art, he draws from life and claims to paint only what he sees. His paintings, all meditation, are part of a wealth of references to the history of art that he embraces with passion. His small-format papers and monumental canvases offer an equal intimacy between delicacy and austerity. Gérard Traquandi, born in Marseille in 1952, is full of paradoxes. It is these tensions that culminate in the joyful breath of color that Galerie Catherine Issert proposes to set to music 13 years after their first collaboration.
Gérard Traquandi began his artistic practice in the late 1970s with photographic experiments. This practice particularly stimulated him, as it provided him with a terrain to trace optical phenomena and question the notions of impressions and imprints. Dreaming of becoming a mountain guide, he was fascinated by the trace and set off on adventures along the paths of sensation until its restitution on the surface of his work. But there is no doubt that works on paper provided the material for his visual language from the very beginning. I paint to look and I don't look to draw. ", explains the most figurative figure of contemporary abstract art.
Loving observation of nature and the charm of landscapes languish on paper. His watercolors have Cézanne accents—didn't he also paint in the countryside of Aix-en-Provence?—declaiming the vibrancy of the foliage. It is an old-world charm that is here and there and transports us to the heart of an Italian garden by Fragonard or Corot. The themes—biblical or traditional, such as landscapes, still lifes, and self-portraits—tell an ancient story, but also reflect the stubborn freedom that guides him… it is this game, more than a struggle with the liquid element of watercolor, that this fabulous technician leads. Yet, the grids of his notebook pages remind us that in this sensual dialectic, mastery and control are not far away. The ink or pencil strokes are sometimes vivid, sometimes tense, sometimes overwhelming, for a drawing that becomes writing.
This passionate quest for landscapes reached its peak in painting. In the early 2010s, Gérard Traquandi forged a method which, he says, " frees himself from his own gestures ", avoids touching and keeps expressiveness at a distance. He works flat in thin layers of glaze, places a sheet of paper loaded with paint on the canvas and removes it.
He searches for chromatic harmonies, meticulously refining his painting technique, while letting chance dance. These impressive full-body combinations record the first impressions of nature, the whims of the climate, while adorning themselves with unreal colors, industrial greens, mysterious purples, pinks in the style of De Kooning or Guston. The painting does not capture the artist's spirit: it is an undulating surface—aquatic? mineral? Warm reflections or snowy surfaces?—a piece of skin, and beyond, a piece of flesh. Traquandi does not intervene between the viewer and the work, and his work is not just a point of view, but a specific subject in its entirety. We thus learn that his practice flourishes naturally in sculpture and ceramics, a medium expressing his attachment to the earth, to the traces, to the imprints left by the body.
The exhibition " Gérard Traquandi, Summer », presented at the Galerie Catherine Issert from July 1 to September 2, 2023, bears witness to this sensitive grammar through an exhibition of drawings, watercolors, paintings, and ceramics. The southern summer is celebrated in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, this southern summer that Matisse and Bonnard seized upon, these painters who nourished the gaze of the Marseille artist drawing the Estrel, Corsica, the Luberon, and Tuscany. Above all, the south of light, at the center of a place bathed in a lot of light. For Gérard Traquandi, to evoke the Italian primitives, the light must truly come from the painting. The spectator exposes himself to it and thus places himself under the awe of nature.
About Gérard Traquandi
Born in 1952, Gérard Traquandi trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown of Marseille. He graduated in 1975 and taught there until the mid-1990s. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in public institutions – at the Museum of Fine Arts in Rennes, the Espace d'Art Concret in Mouins-Sartoux, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie – and more recently at the Musée Cantini (Marseille, Here, there », 2021) and the Museum of Fine Arts of Caen (“The Approval of Nature”, 2022). His work is present in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Musée National d’Art Moderne, the Mac/Val (Vitry), the Mamac (Nice), the Maison de la Maison Européenne de la Photographie and several FRACs. The Catherine Issert gallery has represented his work since 2010. Gérard Traquandi continues his work in Paris and Aix-en-Provence.
Visitor information
Gérard Traquandi “Summer” / July 1 – September 2, 2023 / Opening on July 1, 2023.
Galerie Catherine Issert / 2 route des Serres Saint-Paul de Vence / Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11 a.m. – 13 p.m. / 14 p.m. – 19 p.m.
André Tirlet
Captions: 1/ Untitled, (detail), 2019, watercolor on paper, 35 x 23 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Catherine Issert Gallery – Private collection. 2/ Untitled, 2019, Watercolor on paper, 35 x 46 cm – Courtesy of the artist and Catherine Issert Gallery. 3/ Untitled, 2019, oil on canvas, 46 x 61 cm – Courtesy of the artist and Catherine Issert Gallery. 4/ Untitled, 2019, oil on canvas, 50 x 65 cm – Courtesy of the artist and Catherine Issert Gallery. 5/ Catherine Issert Gallery
