Jean Le Moal,  as one of the principal representatives of the French non-figuration of the second half of the 20th century, is to rediscover beyond aesthetic compartments. The artist divided his life between Paris, Haute-Ardèche and Brittany. He discovered the landscapes that will lead him gradually to the  non-figuration, with works in which colors and lights are united and vibrating.
After studying interior architecture at the end of the 1920s in Lyon, he settled in Paris and copies the old and modern masters - Rembrandt, Vélasquez, Chardin, Bonnard, Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse ...
In 1935, Le Moal joined the fresco workshop at the Ranson Academy, which oriented his taste for the monumental décor and soon the art of stained glass. He participated in the collective adventure of the Lyon group Témoignage, explored and passed over the cubist and surrealist experiences and through the war by affirming already singular artistic choices. These decisive years of formation lead him, after 1945, to a form of abstraction in peace with the figurative representation.

 In a historical journey, the exhibition offers for the first time a complete and unprecedented panorama of the work of Jean Le Moal: "that of a man who feeds on tradition, stands at the frontier of figurative representation and elaborates a personal writing which testifies to the constantly awakening curiosity of an artist opened to the world "(Philippe Bouchet).

Philippe Bouchet, curator of the exhibition, is an art historian, author of articles, prefaces and essays on 20th and 21st century art. He has contributed to numerous catalogs and published several books on Édouard Pignon (1905-1993) as well as on Charles Lapicque (1898-1988), to which he devoted his recent research. He has been the curator of several exhibitions on these two artists.

The "Jean Le Moal exhibition (1909-2007)" is co-organized with the Valence Museum of Art and Archeology (1st stage from 25 June to 7 January) and the Musée de l'Hospice Saint-Roch d ' Issoudun (2nd stage from 9 February to 13 May).

18 commentaries here : quimper.mobi