Jean-Pierre Pincemin: Graveur

The selection of works presented in this exhibition crosses the different universes the artist worked on in his etchings, sometimes abstract or figurative, black & white or colored or even, sometimes enhanced. In his etchings, Jean-Pierre Pincemin did not seek to make copies of his paintings, but approached the etching process as an investigation in its own right, with unprecedented approaches.

""An etching is successful when it approaches a kind of very free, rapid writing, where only one idea is expressed at a time, as in a conversation. The painter rediscovers simple, direct or rather figurative forms, and the engraving, sincere and authentic, touches the most intimate part of the work"" - JP Pincemin, 1997

In this exhibition, the selection focuses on large and very large engravings. It covers 25 years of work, from the 70s with the "Canti" [abstract paintings created by the artist on selected pages of a book by Louis Dalla Fior in 1975] to the early 2000s.

SOLO EXHIBITION OF (LARGE) ENGRAVINGS BY JEAN-PIERRE PINCEMIN, AT THE GALLERY IN RENNES FROM APRIL 13 TO MAY 11 2024

The gallery is closed on French public holidays (May 1^st, 8^th and 9^th) / opening hours as usual on other days: Tuesday to Saturday from 2pm to 7pm + mornings by appointment.

Born in Paris in 1944, Pincemin started out as a factory mechanic before discovering painting at the Louvre. His first exhibition dates back to 1968. He experimented with a whole series of gestures far removed from traditional brushwork: folds, imprints on corrugated iron, impressions of bricks and wire mesh, acting on the canvas like a new material. From 1968 to 1973, he began working with "carrés collés", in which the canvas is dipped in dye baths, cut out and assembled into irregular square or rectangular geometric figures. As early as 1971, he joined the "Support-Surface" movement, created in the late 1960s, which asserted the physical reality of the painting, begun by Matisse with his paper cut-outs, continued by New Abstraction and Hard Edge in the USA, and in France by Simon Hantaï or Claude Viallat. At the end of the 90s, the artist decided to "sweep up and assimilate everything", executing polychrome sculptures using pieces of painted wood, which we have been able to discover in the course of his exhibitions.