VENICE.- This major show dedicated to Raysse, one of the most important living French painters and winner of the 2014 Praemium Imperiale, has taken over the atrium and both floors of Palazzo Grassi. It is the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the artist outside of France since 1965 and is the perfect opportunity to discover or rediscover France’s hidden master and to explore the dedication and proximity between a collector and an artist.

Curated by Caroline Bourgeois in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition brings together more than 300 works from 1958 to the present day - paintings, sculptures, videos and neon works - almost half of which have never been shown to the public (some are works in progress displayed for the first time at Palazzo Grassi). The course of the exhibition, which is non-chronological, offers a new point of view on the work of Martial Raysse by underlining, on the one hand, the multifaceted nature of his artistic production, and, on the other hand, the continuous dialogue and echo he has established among his works throughout his sixty years of career.

The painter emerged at the same time as major post-war American artists such as Warhol and Liechtenstein and he worked in Nice, Paris, New York and Los Angeles. Although one of the major artists of the second half of the 20th century, Raysse has only recently gained the same reputation as some of his more well-known ‘Pop Art’ contemporaries.

Born in 1936, Martial Raysse studied literature before turning to painting in 1955. He is one of the founding members of the New Realism, the artistic movement founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany alongside Armand, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villeglé, and Yves Klein.

In opposition to the New Realists, Martial Raysse was interested in new objects, attractive and beautiful things that represented the consumerist society he was living in. He made his first assemblage in 1959 and became an active member of the European avant-garde. In 1961, at the age of twenty-five, he participated in the “Art of Assemblage” exhibition at MoMA next to Duchamp, Spoerri, Schwitters, Beuys, Bruce Conner and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1962, He made Raysse Beach for the experimental exhibition “Dylaby” (Dynamisch Labyrint), organized at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. This installation designed as a sand beach with inflatable pool and Juke Box introduced the use of neon which became an important material for Raysse.

Raysse continued to innovate and incorporated neon in his paintings creating iconic works such as Nissa Bella in 1964 and then Peinture à haute tension in 1965. Raysse’s first foray into cinema is the painting Suzanna, Suzanna (1964), in which a video is included. After introducing film imagery into painting areas, the artist produced several whimsical, burlesque short films featuring several of his artist friends. He utterly unleashed his critical standpoint and penchant for experimenting in these films. Two-way exchanges between cinema and painting flourished, enriching both.

In the early 70’s Martial Raysse incorporated collaborative practices in his works. The Coco Mato series is a turning point and captures a time of artistic soul-searching while deliberately keeping the day’s prevalent fads at bay and reinvigorating his work amid a hippy community’s collective practices. He created precarious assemblages, conjuring up magic rituals and primitive practices, with simple and purposefully outlandish materials.

The work of Martial Raysse has been exhibited in many institutions, among which the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the SMAK, Ghent; The Menil Collection, Houston… Monographic shows have also been presented, including at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; at the Musée Picasso, Antibes and more recently at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Furthermore, the artist represented France at the 33rd Venice Art Biennale (1962).

The sceneography - and in particular the display victimes in the atrium of Palazzo Grassi - was entrusted to Martin Szekely whose works are presented in museums such as the MoMA, the Centre Pompidou and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the MUDAM in Luxembourg.

This exhibition is part of a series of major solo shows dedicated to contemporary artists - Urs Fischer in 2012, Rudolf Stingel in 2013 - presented alternately with thematic exhibitions of works from the Pinault Collection. ”Martial Raysse” is on show throughout the 56th Venice Art Biennale.