The time has come for a wonderful journey through the talismans of contemporary (21st century) and modern (second half of the 20th century) painters at the ROUTES & 53 Gallery. More than one hundred small-format works will be presented.
While wandering through the rooms of the Musée d'Orsay, our gaze falls upon your painting; not very large, with a simple and intense luminosity, featuring patches of yellow and blue-green, bisected by a band of reddish-orange and underlined by small vertical blue streaks. At first glance, we don't know what the work represents, but it exudes the joy of painting, it heralds the purity of a new era in painting, it displays a marvelous freedom from the official art of the Academy of Fine Arts of your time.
The painting is balanced in the modern sense of the term, that is to say, free from all chromatic references to classical art, in a harmonious construction, far removed from Euclidean space.
In the long process of a painter's work, a moment arrives that marks a turning point: a major work. This masterful punctuation mark seems to reveal the end of a phase of completed work or contributes a stone to the edifice of a new exploration. The seminal painting acquires a sacred power. The artist never parts with it, like the "Mona Lisa" (*) which is said to have accompanied Leonardo da Vinci on all his travels during his lifetime.
Often, this talismanic painting is not very large, because it must be held, touched, taken out of the studio, or moved regularly like a Bible, in order to be studied. These pivotal paintings, both for the artist and the viewer, possess exceptional mobility; they refuse to remain fixed to the wall; they yearn to travel with their owner. Like icon paintings or Far Eastern kakemono that are rolled up and unrolled to be carried away, these talismans become true traveling companions to spread the good word of art.