Camille Bryen
Composition, 1963
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated lower left,
Counter-signed, dated, and numbered on the back
Dimensions: 100 x 81 cm, with frame: 112 x 94 cm
Bibliography
• Catalogue Raisonné—Jacqueline Boutet-Loyer (No. 352, reproduced)
• Levêque 1970, reprinted
Exhibitions:
• Tokyo, 1966
• Le Havre 1970, No. 21
• C.N.A.C. 1971, p. 8, reprinted on p. 34, right column
• Geneva 1975, No. 2
• Nice 1983
Price: 33,000 euros
Biography
Camille Bryen is a poet, poet of signs, of words, of color. He was one of the initiators of lyrical abstraction. Called the “father of tachisme”, he wanted to dissolve form in favor of non-form.
A poet associated with the Dadaist movement, it was only after the war that he gave free rein to his graphic activity.
At the beginning his painting is violent in colors then from the 60s, his language becomes more subtle. The pale, muted colors are applied in subtle strokes—a mosaic of luminous, colorful touches whose balance is disrupted by the projection of fragmented lines.
There’s a contradiction between his pictorial work – suave, delicate, measured abstraction – and his protest intentions and statements.
In 1926, he came to Paris. It is said that it was André Breton on his return from a surrealist congress who brought him back in his luggage. It was as a poet that he joined the group of surrealists and the initiated circles of Saint Germain des Prés and Montparnasse.
He became acquainted with Wols and played an active role in the discovery of automatic expressions. He sought to develop an autonomous language no longer controlled by rational thought but by the psyche and the will, following the example of the Dada movement in making a clean break from all ideological and aesthetic constraints.
He exhibited at the Salon des “Surindépendants” from 35 to 38. In 1947, he and Matthieu organized exhibitions featuring Arp, Atlan, Hartung, Wols, Picabia…
He exhibited at the Salons des Réalités Nouvelles and subsequently exhibited regularly at the Salon de Mai.
Four one-man shows were held in Paris from 1952 to 1956, followed by Milan and Vienna.
Major retrospectives of his work took place at the Musée du Havre in 1972, at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1973 and finally at 1997 at the Musée
in Nantes, his hometown.
It is present in all major events in France and abroad.
Museums
• In Paris: National Museum of Modern Art; Center Pompidou, contemporary museum Vitry sur Seine.
• In France: Nantes, Le Havre, Lyon, Dunkirk, Dijon, Grenoble, Rouen, Lille, Marseille, Rennes, Saint-Étienne, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Tourcoing, Tournus.
– Internationally:
New York (Museum of Modern Art),
Oslo (Nasjonasgal),
Rome (National Gallery of Modern Art),
Jerusalem,
Locarno, Basel
Lisbon (Gubelkian Foundation),
Basel (Art Museum),
Skopje, Wiesbaden.
