Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, Stockholm
Galerie Bonnier, Lausanne
Galerie Europe, Paris
Private collection, since 1966
Venice, 30th Biennale, Room XXXVII, Central Pavilion, April-June 1960, no. 17
Stockholm, Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, Fautrier, Målningar - Brancusi, Skulptur, 1961, no. 12, ill.
Lausanne, Galerie Bonnier, Jean Fautrier, 1962, no. 6 of the leaflet
Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne, Jean Fautrier, 24 May – 24 September 1989, no. 153, ill. p. 146
Andros, Museum of Contemporary Art-Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Glancing at the Century, 28 June – 20 September 1998, pp. 90-91, ill. p. 91
Yves Peyré, Jean Fautrier ou les outrages de l’impossible, Paris, Éditions du Regard, 1990, p. 311, ill.
The 1950s were for Jean Fautrier a period of artistic renown, international reputation and a certain affluence which enabled him to travel, something he rarely did until then. Of all the cities he had visited, the one that was dear to him was certainly New York. Like any European arriving for the first time in Manhattan, one can imagine his vertigo before the enormous skyscrapers and the perfectly geometric urbanization divided into blocks.
In the work presented here, simply entitled Manhattan, the city is rendered as a rectangular grid. Its smooth, rational, orthogonal appearance is mitigated by the numerous impastos, scattered randomly, as well as by the handling of colours. A shading of purple tones turning into pale yellow seems to reveal us the zones of shade and light succeeding one another in this city, where the sun always reaches only a small part of the ground, just like in a tropical forest. Thus, the image of Manhattan slightly changes, gaining more complexity, like an imaginary jazz sheet music. Also, it should be noted that the artist created a great number of works with English titles, clearly referring to classical songs of that genre: I’m Falling in Love (1957), Body and Soul (1957), Black Beauty (1963), among others.
Manhattan is one of the works sent by Jean Fautrier to the Venice Biennale in 1960, when he shared the International Grand Prize with Hans Hartung.
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