PARIS.- Nearly thirty recent works, including several monumental pieces, are on view at 28 rue du Grenier-Saint-Lazare. For this second major exhibition in ten years–his retrospective at the Pompidou Center took place in 2014 -Martial Raysse displays canvases of striking density. Three large-scale works, flirting with the ambition and drama of history painting, engage in dialogue with a series of allegorical female figures. Among them are Le Grand Jury(2022), La Peur(2023), four meters long and imbued with reminiscences of the war in Ukraine as well as the artist’s childhood memories, and its fairy-tale counterpart La Paix(2023), a five-meterlongcanvasunveiled at Art Basel Paris last October.
During these years of research, Martial Raysse engaged in a sustained dialogue with theOld Masters. La Peuret La Paixthus resonate with the panels Picasso designed for the chapel at the Château de Vallauris, while paying homage to other tutelary figures such as Jean Fouquet and Nicolas Poussin.
The cohorts of half-radiant, half-bitter faces that now populate the gallery space testify to a keen sense of composition and constant attention to the symbolism of gestures. A black cat, a flower-covered hand, a dagger lurking in the shadows: with Raysse, every detail counts. He takes us from one narrative to another, multiplying the levels of interpretation and revealing, in successive layers, the tensions and challenges of the contemporary world.
Internationally renowned, Martial Raysse’s work continues to surprise, reinvent itself, and leave its mark on art history. By presenting these recent works today, Templon highlights the latest achievements of an artist who has never stopped observing, experimenting, and revisiting his craft. Conceived far removed from fads and injunctions, his luminous apocalypses speak of the farce, and sometimes the chaos, of a humanity in motion.
Born in 1936 in Golfe-Juan, Martial Raysse, a pioneer of French Pop Art, creates images that transcend the banality of everyday life. Strongly influenced by advertising, he turns away from realistic art to reveal the underlying vitality of everyday objects and images. His thinking evolved throughout his career and took different forms: painting, neon, assemblage and video. A member of the New Realism movement in the early 1960s, Martial Raysse quickly gained recognition for his innovative art and represented France at the 1966 Venice Biennale. Questioning his interest in the pop world following the events of May 1968, he quickly turned away from ‘formal aestheticism’.
