Welcome to Hervé Di Rosa’s monde fantastique. It is a world where gravity takes a backseat to levity and a cartoon atmosphere prevails. Di Rosa’s paintings, I should say his unrestrained artistic practice, takes us on journeys of visual delight He invites us to abandon our serious pursuits and join him in the revelry at hand.
I can think of no better work to serve as an introduction to the Schulz Collection than the rollicking 1985 canvas of a train-wreck, Excursion [cat. 2]. Viewers have a close up view of two trains bound for destruction. The passengers are half wild with joy or terror as their locomotives crash head-on and explode in a fireball. Figures scream madly and jump out of windows, while a drunken engineer blithely downs another can of beer No matter As the cars careen off the tracks, a rocker blissfully plays his guitar and wails a final song while drunkards dream atop the doomed coaches A trackside crowd of spectators push their bug-eyes and comic noses through the bushes to see this rolling apocalypse, and a nearby cow-creature seems to be shaking its horns as if to say, “this can’t be happening”.
It’s all great demented fun. Or is it? If we can stop laughing we might look more closely at some of the details in the painting. We find a brakeman wildy waving his signal flags in heedless warning, and that one engine boiler is cast with the initials SNCF, the abbreviation of the French National Railway, Société nationale des chemins de fer Français Could this riotous scene also be Di Rosa’s comment on the foibles of a giant government bureaucracy? The sprawling SNCF has long been known for its chronic resistance to reforms, notoriously high debt, and aging infrastructure. To which list one could add, as a recent article relates1 , service delays, overcrowding and increasing customer complaints about high prices, to say nothing about safety and its repercussions for passengers Maybe Di Rosa has the last laugh here I believe this is what the critic Otto Hahn meant by Di Rosa’s “complexity of cultural intention.”2
The Pantheon of Figuration Libre artists - Combas, Blanchard, Boisrond and the Di Rosa brothers Hervé & Richard - have feasted upon and been renowned for presenting, le comédie humaine. Under a colorful smokescreen of sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll and graffiti, these artists have held up new mirrors to our behavior, the foibles and manias of modern society Di Rosa works in the great tradition of fantasy and fatalism as developed by Balzac in Le Skein Magique and Poe in The Descent Into a Maelstrom, or in modern times by the artists of Mad Magazine and the canvases of Keith Haring. Di Rosa’s exaggerated cartoon figures like those in Vernissage [cat 10] reach beyond mere caricature into a deepening satire of a troupe of styled-out art lovers who themselves are as interesting to look at as the art they have gotten so dressed up to see.
The delights and follies of our lives, whether we are laid out in a hammock [La Sieste, cat 4] or driving blithely through the countryside [En vacances , cat 5], are brilliantly displayed in Di Rosa’s palette of strong primary colors, curvaceous lines and built up textured surfaces. In many of his works this presentation has a tactile sensuality that provokes a frisson of satisfaction in the viewer’s eye. That is, after all, where seeing really begins.
1https://www.dw.com/en/the-great-train-debate-whats-to-be-done-with frances-sncf/a-43236010, Arthur Sullivan, DW (Deutsche Welle), March 24, 2018
2A La Poursuite Du Bonheur, introduction to exhbition catalogue, Herve and Richard De Rosa: Paintings and Sculpture, Wolf Schulz Gallery, San Francisco, 1990
(French School, Born Sète, Occitanie, 1959)
After studying for a time at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD), Di Rosa began selling his paintings in 1979 in Paris, Amsterdam and New York. In 1981, Di Rosa co-founded the Figuration Libre (Free Figuration) movement [Robert Combas, Rémi Blanchard, etc.], so named bythe artist Ben (Benjamin Vautier, B. 1935). WithCombas and KettyBrindel (who joined the group "Les Démondés" by Richard Di Rosa), he created the art magazine ‘Bato’. In 1981, he also exhibited at an exhibit organized by the noted critic and collector Bernard Lamarche-Vadel.
In the 1990s he set off on a world tour that put him in touch with craftsmen and artisans in Tunisia, Bulgaria, Ghana, Benin, Ethiopia, Vietnam, South Africa, Corsica, Cuba, Mexico, the United States, Cameroon, Israel. Withoutclaiming a particular style, but bydeveloping a narrative universe of his own which is populated by recurring characters, he has practiced many creative techniques including painting, sculpture, comics, tapestry, prints, fresco, lacquer, ceramics, cartoon, and digital images. He is the author or subject of more than 150 art books and publications produced between 1978 and 2019.
Di Rosa’s work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and is present in important public and private collections in Europe, America and Asia. His work has been exhibited at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York (1983), the Robert Frazer Gallery, London (1984), the Paris Biennale (1985), the Sogetsu Kaikan Foundation, Tokyo (1985), the Laage Salomon Gallery, Paris (1987), the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris (1988), the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico City (2001), and the Bass Museum, Miami Beach (2005). He exhibits regularly at Galerie Louis Carré & Cie, Paris.
In 2000, in his hometown of Sète, Di Rosa founded Modest Art, now called the International Museum of Modest Arts (MIAM). It exhibits many artists from around the world in creative exhibitions that question the boundaries of contemporary art. Some of the collection was exhibited in Paris at La Maison Rouge Foundation in 2016-2017.
P.1-2#1
Untitled (nine shaped sections), 1985 Acrylic on canvas with applied burlap panel at center Signed and dated lower right: DI ROSA 85 H 69 x W 78 in. [175 x 198 cm]
P.3-4#2
Excursion, 1987 SOLD Acrylic on canvas Signed and dated lower right: DI ROSA 87, titled at upper left in the painted image: EXCURSION H 76.5 x W 77 in [194 x 195 cm]
P.5-6#3
L’Artiste art su danseuse, 1990 Acrylic and mixed media with painted and carved wood, on wood panel, with artist-painted frame Signed and dated lower left: DI ROSA 90 H 80 x W 48 in [200 x 120 cm]
Literature: Herve & Richard Di Rosa, Paintings & Sculpture, Wolf Schulz Gallery catalogue, San Francisco, 1990, illus. in cat. (no page nos.)
P.7-8#4
La sieste, 1990 SOLD Acrylic on wood panel, with artist-painted frame Signed and dated lower center: DI ROSA 1990 H 80 x 48 in [200 x 120 cm]
P.9-10#5
En vacances en voiture, en bateau ou en avion, 1990
Acrylic on wood panel, with artist-constructed steel frame
Signed and dated lower right: DI ROSA 90 H 80 x W 48 in [200 x 120 cm]
P.11-12#6
La chasse aux alouettes, 1990
Acrylic on heavy wove paper mounted on foamcore
Signed and dated lower right: -DI ROSA 90, titled lower left: CHASSE AUX ALOUETTES Sheet: H 60 x W 40 in [152 X 101 cm]
P.13-14#7
Fin de repas, 1990
Acrylic on heavy wove paper mounted on foamcore
Signed and dated lower right: DI ROSA 90, titled lower left: FIN DE REPAS Sheet: H 60 x W 40 in [152 X 101 cm]
P.15-16#8
Les Sirènes, 1990
Acrylic on heavy wove paper mounted on foamcore
Signed and dated lower right: DI ROSA 90, titled lower left: LES SIRÈNES Sheet: H 60 x W 40 in [152 X 101 cm]
P.17-18#9
Sous le soleil exactement, 1990 Acrylic on heavy wove paper mounted on foamcore
Signed and dated lower right: DI ROSA 90, titled along bottom: SOUS LES SOLEIL EXACTEMENT Sheet: H 60 x W 40 in [152 X 101 cm]
P.19-20#10
Le Vernissage, 1990
Acrylic on heavy wove paper mounted on foamcore Titled, signed and dated upper left: LE VERNISSAGEDI ROSA 1990Sheet: H 60 x W 40 in [152 X 101 cm]
