East meets West

E A S T M E E T S W E S T

East meets West is an exhibition which explores the relationship between Eastern and Western abstract art from the post-war period until the present day. Through comparisons between artists, this exhibition positions abstraction as a uniting thread across disparate artistic networks, looking at how it was uniquely adapted across the Far East to Europe and the USA. The exhibition features Asian artists who worked in the West, and Western artists who worked in and took inspiration from the East. It includes pieces by major contemporary Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama, who from 1957 spent a period living in New York, and conversely, works by American artists Sam Francis and Paul Jenkins, both of whom were influenced by Eastern philosophy, with the latter spending long periods in Japan.

East meets West seeks to ignite the conversation between these abstract artists and consider how abstraction evolved across the globe over the past 70 years.

EAST MEETS WEST

STERN PISSARRO GALLERY IMPRESSIONIST - MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART - SINCE 1964

66 St. James’s Street London, SW1A 1NE, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7629 6662, stern@pissarro.com www.pissarro.art

CHUN KWANG-YOUNG (B. 1944) Born in Hongchun, Korea, in 1944, Chun Kwang Young was educated in both Korea and America. He completed his formal education at Hong-lk University in Seoul and received an MFA from Philadelphia College of Art in 1971. With a career spanning around half a century, he is widely considered to be a master of paper-based art and installation.

Beginning his career in the USA, Chun Kwang Young was influenced early on by the American Abstract Expressionists – specifically by their use of form and colour. After returning to Korea, he developed his own unique style which made direct reference to his cultural heritage but remained indebted to his time in the West and the conceptual freedom he experienced.

Chun’s aesthetic vocabulary is defined by his abstract use of traditional Korean mulberry paper, known as hanji. Inspired by his childhood memories of regular visits to his relatives’ traditional Chinese pharmacy, where he witnessed medicine wrapped in mulberry paper, Chun creates large-scale freestanding and wall-hung reliefs, reminiscent of rocky terrains or crystal formations. Each piece is carefully dyed using natural extracts such as tea and clay, then wrapped and arranged individually in triangular forms to assemble the composition. The triangles of mulberry paper and discarded pages claimed from 100-yearold textbooks, provide the viewer with fragments of various topics. The pre-war textbooks are holistic in nature, containing Chinese and Korean characters and multiple subjects such as philosophy, mythology, medicine, and chemistry.

Today, Chun Kwang Young lives and works in Boondang-gu, South Korea. His works can be found in numerous public collections worldwide including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museum Kunstwerk, Germany; Malta National Museum; and the National University Museum of Art, Seoul.

Among his numerous accolades, he was named Artist of the Year by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2001) and was awarded the Presidential Prize in the 41st Korean Culture and Art Prize (2009). More recently, he has had exhibitions at Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art (2016), the Brooklyn Museum (2018) and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (2019). In 2022, Chun has had an exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA) - focusing purely on his Aggregations - and has had his work showcased at the site-specific Hanji House, designed by Italian architect Stefano Boeri for the Venice Biennale.

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CHUN KWANG-YOUNG (B. 1944) Aggregation 12-MY019 BLUE Mixed media with Korean mulberry paper mounted on board 131 x 163 cm (51 ⁵/₈ x 64 ¹/₈ inches) Signed, dated and titled on the reverse Executed in 2012

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JEAN-PAUL RIOPELLE (1923-2002) Jean-Paul Riopelle was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 7 October 1923. He began his career at the École Polytechnique in 1941, pursuing engineering with architecture and photography. During this time, his childhood enthusiasm for making art resurfaced, and he described himself as a Sunday painter with a constrained, academic style.

In 1942 he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montreal but shifted to a much less academic approach at the École du Meuble, graduating in 1945. There he studied with Paul-émile Borduas, a teacher who was extremely dedicated to his students and gave them a great deal of freedom. It was under Borduas’s direction that Riopelle made his first abstract painting. From 1942-45, Borduas and several of his students, including Riopelle, formed a group that worked, socialised, and exhibited together. The group became known as the Automatistes for their spontaneous method of painting, which drew on the subconscious as a source.

In 1946, Riopelle first travelled to France, where he would return and settle the following year. Borduas authored the manifesto Refus Global in 1948, which was signed by several of his students, including Riopelle. Riopelle had his first solo exhibition at the Surrealist meeting place, Galerie La Dragonne in Paris, in 1949. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, he met and became friends with artists, writers and gallery owners including Georges Mathieu and Pierre Loeb, who introduced him to André Breton. He also met Jean Arp and Antonin Artaud at Loeb’s gallery.

The coming years brought Riopelle increasing success and immersion in the Parisian cultural scene. He was represented in New York and participated in the biennials of contemporary art in Venice (1954) and São Paulo (1955). He spent his evenings in Paris bistros with the likes of playwright Samuel Beckett and artist Alberto Giacometti.

In such works as Pavane (1954) and The Wheel II (1956), Riopelle pioneered a style of painting where large quantities of varied coloured paints were thickly applied to the canvas with a trowel or palette knife.

Seeking to express a ‘mental landscape, the result of his relations with reality’, these works of lyrical abstraction show the influence of surrealism and Riopelle’s free-flowing subconscious.

In the 1960s, Riopelle renewed his ties to Canada. Exhibitions were held at the National Gallery of Canada (1963), and the Musée du Quebec held a retrospective in 1967. In the early 1970s, he built a home and studio in the Laurentians. From 1974 he divided his time between St. Marguerite in Quebec, and SaintCyr-en-Arthies in France. Riopelle participated in his last exhibition in 1996. From 1994 until his death, 12 March 2002, he maintained homes in both St. Marguerite and Isle-aux-Grues, Quebec.

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JEAN-PAUL RIOPELLE (1923 -2002) Territoire Oil on canvas 114.3 x 162.6 cm (45 x 64 inches) Signed lower right, Riopelle Executed in 1967 Literature Yseult Riopelle and Tanguy Riopelle, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Tome 4, 1966-1971, Catalogue Raisonné, cat. no. 1967.017H.1967, p. 137, illustrated in colour

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GERHARD RICHTER (B. 1932) German artist Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden and raised in the remote countryside of present-day Poland, where his father could avoid excessive contact with the Nazi authorities. Upon leaving school, in what had then become communist East Germany, Richter initially worked as a signage painter, before studying at the nearby Dresden Academy of Art. Later, while working as a teacher at the Dresden Academy, Richter took several commissions for the communist East German government – executed in the proscribed state-style known as Socialist Realism. Only a few months before the erection of the infamous Berlin Wall, he was brave enough, and lucky enough, to escape the East for West Berlin.

Settling in Düsseldorf and continuing his studies at the city’s Fine Arts academy, Richter met the artist Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) and, in 1963, together they inaugurated the Kapitalistischer Realismus (or Capitalist Realism) group – a cutting-edge German variant of Pop Art. Despite a prolific career employing abstraction, sculpture, and performance, today Richter is best known for his ‘photorealist’ paintings.

These works mimic mechanical and digital reproduction, understood as images which question perception in the age of ‘postmodernism’.

For the past three decades, Richter has devoted much of his time to painting, exploring colour relationships in his abstract works. Some involve fields of colour being swept into each other using his iconic squeegee or sponge technique. Others evoke biomorphic processes or focus purely on geometry and repetition.

Exhibiting widely across Europe and the United States since the early 1960s, Richter’s work is highly coveted at auction and held in international museums across the world. Most recently his work was shown in solo exhibitions at Tate Modern in London (2011), Centre Pompidou in Paris (2012), Neue National Galerie in Berlin (2012), and at the Met Breuer, New York as part of his monumental survey Painting After All (2020).

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GERHARD RICHTER (B. 1932) Vermalung (Braun) Oil on canvas 27 x 40 cm (10 ⁵/₈ x 15 ³/₄ inches) Signed and dated on the reverse, Richter, 72 Executed in 1972 Literature Butin, H., Gronert, S., Gerhard Richter: Editions 1965-2004, Catalogue Raisonné, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, pp 107, 115 Elger, D., Gerhard Richter: Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 4, 1988-1994, Ostfildern 2015, no. 325-77

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SAM FRANCIS (1923-1994) One of the twentieth century’s most profound Abstract Expressionists, American artist Sam Francis is noted as one of the first post-World War II painters to develop an international reputation. Francis created thousands of paintings as well as works on paper, prints and monotypes, housed in major museum collections and institutions around the world. Regarded as one of the leading interpreters of colour and light, his work holds references to Abstract Expressionism, Chinese and Japanese art, French Impressionism, and his own Bay Area roots.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 1950 with an M.A in Literary Studies, Francis moved to Paris, where he would go on to be named by TIME Magazine as, ‘the hottest American painter in Paris these days.’ A transformative period of his career, Francis immersed himself in a study of Monet’s Water Lilies and was influenced by his close friendships with the Matisse family and artists Al Held, Joan Mitchell, and Jean-Paul Riopelle.

For the next four decades he travelled and studied extensively, maintaining studios in Bern, Paris, Tokyo, Mexico City, New York and Northern and Southern California. Through his travels he was exposed to many styles, techniques, and cultural influences, which informed the development of his own dialogue and style of painting. Francis possessed a lyrical and gestural hand, enabling him to capture and record the brilliance, energy, and intensity of colour at different moments of time and periods of his life.

Francis’s interest in the creative process was expansive and synergistic – art, technology, psychology, science, medicine, and the environment. He was an early investor in research to find creative solutions to our dependence on non-renewable energy sources and cures for AIDs. Francis died in California in 1994.

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SAM FRANCIS (1923-1994) Composition Acrylic and paper collage on paper 57.2 x 81.3 cm (22 ¹/₂ x 32 inches) Stamped on the reverse with Sam Francis Estate logo stamp and fascimile signature stamp Executed in 1990 This work is registered in the archives of the Sam Francis Foundation under identification number SF90-5PRS.

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SAM FRANCIS (1923-1994) Sklye Acrylic on paper 14.6 x 10.2 cm (5 ³/₄ x 4 inches) Signed, Sam Francis and dated on the reverse Signed again, dated and inscribed on the backing board Executed in 1986, Los Angeles This work is registered in the archives of the Sam Francis Foundation under identification number SF86-332.

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TOSHIMITSU ÏMAI (1928-2002) Born in Kyoto, Japan in 1928, Imai is a significant figure of the 20th-century Japanese avant-garde. He began his formal education at the Tokyo State Art Academy, where he took up painting, with his early works characterised by colourful abstractions, reminiscent of Fauvism. In 1951, Imai was awarded the Kansai-Shinseisaku Prize and in 1952 the prize for the best new artist at the 15th Shinseisaku Salon.

Imai relocated to Paris in 1953, where he attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Sorbonne to read medieval history and philosophy. During this time, he exhibited at the Salon de d’Art Sacré, and in 1955 Imai completely abandoned representational art in favour of abstraction. After meeting the art critic Michel Tapié - via the artist Sam Francis – Imai became the first Japanese member of the the Art Informel movement.

In 1956, Imai was called upon by the Japanese artist Taro Okamoto to curate an exhibition entitled The World: Today’s Art in Tokyo. Artists such as Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, Lucio Fontana, and Karel Appel gained important exposure in Japan. It was also in 1957 when Imai arranged for Tapié and the artists Georges Mathieu and Sam Francis to travel to Japan, that a connection between Art Informel and Gutai occurred. The Ashiya-based Gutai Art Association formed in 1954, was proclaimed a kindred spirit

by Tapié which he subsequently promoted internationally. Founding members included Yoshihara Jiro, Kanayma Akira, Murakami Saburo, Shiraga Kazuo and Shozo Shimamoto. The art historian Yve-Alain Bois commented ‘the activities of the Gutai group in the mid-1950s constitute one of the most important moments of post-war Japanese culture’.

Most notably, Imai’s work was exhibited at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1953 and the Venice Biennale in 1960, bringing him international acclaim. In 1962, Imai was awarded a prestigious prize at the 5th Exhibition of Japanese Contemporary Art in Tokyo. Several works from this exhibition can now be found in the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

Although largely an abstract painter, Imai fluctuated between figurative and abstract, and in the 70s began to integrate poetic text into his paintings. At this time, he lived between Paris and Japan, later participating in a two-year show at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1982. In 1984, Imai co-founded the Japanese Contemporary Artists’ Association. In 1991 Imai was made an honorary citizen in Madrid and in 1992 of Lyon. He received numerous distinctions and awards, including being made a chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 1996 and in 1997, an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

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TOSHIMITSU ÏMAI (1928-2002) Red Composition Oil on canvas 80.2 x 55.3 (31 ⅝ x 21 ¾ inches) Signed, TOSHIMITSU IMAÏ, dated, 1963 Paris and inscribed in Japanese on the reverse

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TOSHIMITSU ÏMAI (1928-2002) Vagues “Wave” Acrylic on paper 127 x 95 cm (50 x 37 ⅜ inches) Signed lower right, IMAI Inscribed in Japanese and English, VAGUES “WAVE”, 1992-1997 and signed and dated, TOSHIMITSU IMAI août (August) 1992 on the reverse

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TOSHIMITSU ÏMAI (1928-2002) Soleil Fendu Oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm (28 ³/₄ x 23 ⁵/₈ inches) Signed upper left, IMAÏ; signed, titled and dated on the reverse Executed March 1963, Paris

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PAUL JENKINS (1923-2012) Born in Kansas City, Missouri, the multi-media artist, poet, and playwright Paul Jenkins studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Art Students League in New York City. As a student, frequent visits to the renowned Eastern collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City evoked powerful sympathy for a monumental Chinese fresco of Buddha, polychrome sculptures of the enlightened Bodhisattva, the Buddhist goddess of mercy Kuan-Yin, Indian bronzes of Hindu god Shiva, and statues of meditative Buddhist lohans. After enrolling in the US Naval Air Corps during WWII, Jenkins painted watercolours of Japanese Kabuki dancers and read the ancient Chinese poetic teachings of the I Ching and Lao Tse Tung’s Tao Te Ching.

Following the war, he briefly studied playwriting with dramatist George McCalmon at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh before spending four years studying with Japanese American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi in New York. His first solo exhibitions were held at Studio Paul Facchetti in Paris in 1954 and the Martha Graham Gallery in New York in 1956. Jenkins’ discovery of psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s book Psychology and Alchemy was illuminating for his practice, as were formative meetings with dancer Martha Graham, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and Abstract Expressionist painters Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Barnett Newman.

Over the past thirty years, numerous retrospectives have been curated across the globe and Jenkins’ work can found in national collections from Europe and the United States to Israel, Australia, and Japan. Concerned with colour and texture, nearness and distance, reality and mysticism, Jenkins’ work is a spiritual meditation on the nature of chance, balance, synchronicity, change and transformation.

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PAUL JENKINS (1923-2012) Phenomena High Born Acrylic on canvas 91.44 x 50.8 cm (36 x 20 inches) Signed lower left, Jenkins Signed, dated and titled on the reverse Executed in 1964

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PAUL JENKINS (1923-2012) Phenomena Prism Shadow Acrylic on canvas 99 x 99 cm (39 x 39 inches) Signed lower left, Paul Jenkins Signed, titled and dated on the reverse Executed in 1986

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ALEXANDER CALDER (1898-1976) Alexander Calder, also known as ‘Sandy’ was born in 1898 in Philadelphia, his father and grandfather Alexander Stirling Calder and Alexander Milne Calder were both well-known sculptors. Described as an arbitrary choice, Calder originally gained a mechanical engineering degree at the Stevens Institute of Technology, acquiring the mathematical skills which would later inform his ingenious approach to sculpture.

In 1923, he enrolled at the Art Students League in New York City. While still a student, Calder worked for the National Police Gazette – a legendary American culture magazine. ‘Circus’ was his first editorial theme, and he was assigned to sketch the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey; one of the most famous travelling circus companies. In June 1926, Calder made his first wire sculptures at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. These included Cirque Calder - a miniature circus that was animated by hand at performances given to his friends. The work was well received by many of the Parisian avant-garde artists such as Fernand Léger, Jean Arp and Marcel Duchamp, and was also exhibited in New York in 1929 at the Haws-Harden apartment.

After visiting Piet Mondrian’s studio in 1930, Calder was inspired by the abstract forms in Mondrian’s paintings. In early 1932, in an exhibition organised by Duchamp - who coined the word ‘mobile’- Calder displayed his first moving sculpture. His exploration of motion in art began with using motors, but soon Calder used air-currents alone, creating movement he described as occurring ‘by nature and chance.’

From the 1940’s, Calder produced a rich body of work on paper. Both abstract and figurative, many of these were vibrant gouaches which deployed a restricted colour pallet. With the rarity of his mobile works, his gouaches provide rare opportunity to purchase a Calder piece, and as such prove highlight desirable on the market.

Today, Calder’s works, including many large-scale outdoor works, inhabit major cities across the world.

Calder died in 1976.

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ALEXANDER CALDER (1898-1976) Spirale Gouache and ink on paper 75 x 110 cm (29 ½ x 43 ¼ inches) Signed and dated lower right, Calder 69 Dedicated lower middle and lower right, à Anne – Marie with an illustration of a hammer This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under the application number A27972.

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YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) Japanese multi-media artist, writer and designer Yayoi Kusama graduated from Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts and relocated to New York City in 1958. After achieving fame and notoriety with ground-breaking art ‘happenings’, she returned to her country of birth in 1973 and is now one of Japan’s most significant contemporary artists.

Initially associated with Abstract Expressionism, Kusama soon became an installation artist and an associate of Andy Warhol, gaining international attention during the late 1960s. Her provocative and hallucinatory ‘happenings’ involved painting naked bodies with nets of brightly coloured polka dots. Inspired by the hallucinations she has experienced since childhood, the intricate lattice of paint comprising her famous Infinity Net canvases, create in the negative spaces between the loops a polka dot pattern that fluctuates before the viewer. Kusama also creates installations that immerse the viewer in her obsessive vision of endless dots and nets or infinitely mirrored space – one of which is currently on display at the Tate Modern, London.

Her interest remains in the uncanny texture and hierarchy of surfaces - canvases, mirrors, furniture, clothes, floors, walls, industrial objects, as well as the human body – and the transgressive effect each exerts upon the spaces they inhabit and define. The pumpkin has also become another central motif in Kusama’s iconography, described by her as a form of self-portraiture.

Since 1977 she has lived voluntarily in a Tokyo psychiatric institution and much of her work has been marked with obsessiveness and a desire to escape from psychological trauma. Her extensive and diverse body of work shares the characteristics of Surrealism, Minimalism, Pop Art, Abstraction, Conceptual and Performance art and yet continues to defy neat categorisation. Over the past twenty years, there have been major international exhibitions of Kusama’s work. In 1998 a significant retrospective of her work opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), travelling to New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOT). In 2016 Kusama was selected as one of TIME Magazine’s World 100 Most Influential People.

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YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) Dots-Obsession Acrylic on canvas 41 x 32 cm (16 ¹/₈ x 12 ⁵/₈ inches) Signed, title and dated 2005 on the reverse This work is accompanied by a registration card issued by Kusama Enterprise, Tokyo.

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YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) Fire (3) Gouache and pastel on paper 27.8 x 20.4 cm (11 x 8 inches) Signed, titled and dated on the reverse Executed in 1952 This work is accompanied by a registration card issued by Kusama Enterprise, Tokyo.

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PAOLO SCHEGGI (1940-1971) Born in Florence, Italian artist Paolo Scheggi is considered a pioneer of Spatialism, revered for his artistic engagement in conceptual reflections and metaphysics. With his career most active between 1958 and 1971, today Scheggi’s work is recognisable by its bright sculptural style, and recurring elliptical motifs.

After studying for a period in London, in 1961 Scheggi moved to Milan where he joined the Azimut/h project - an art gallery and magazine run by the Italian artists Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni. The project was focused on innovation and conceptual art. While the Azimut/h was short-lived, it introduced Scheggi to a wider circle of artists interested in the neo-avant-garde, such as Lucio Fontana, Heinz Mack and Yves Klein.

In 1965, Scheggi participated in the third exhibition organised by the New Tendencies. Held in Zagreb, Croatia, the New Tendencies were interested in developing a broader European artistic network - as such increasing Scheggi’s international following. Over this period, he remained well-established in Northern Europe, continuing to regularly exhibit with groups such as the ZERO and Nul. By 1966, aged only 26, he was invited to exhibit his work at the Venice Biennale.

Informed by the neo-avant-garde ideas he was exposed to during the 1960’s, he received international acclaim for his Intersuperfici and Strutture Modulari works. By layering monochromatic surfaces, Scheggi created distinctive geometric openings which play with the field of vision.

The latter part of his career was centred around further exploring the idea of the painting as an object, rather than a surface. During this period, he collaborated on several architectural projects with the like of Mendini and Olivieri.

After his death in 1971, Scheggi’s last works were exhibited posthumously at the 1972 Venice Biennale, with artists such as Fontana paying tribute to his life and work.

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PAOLO SCHEGGI (1940-1971) Intersuperficie Die-cut paper 40.8 x 40.8 x 11.8 cm (16 x 16 x 4 ⁵/₈ inches) Executed in 1969 This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the Archivio Scheggi.

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SONIA DELAUNAY (1885-1979) Born on the banks of the Dnieper River in present-day Ukraine, Sonia Delaunay was raised by her aunt and uncle in St Petersburg. At the age of eighteen she was enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany, before moving to Paris to continue her studies at the progressive Académie de La Palette in Montparnasse. During her early years in Paris, she discovered her love for vivid paintings by the likes of Vincent Van Gogh and Henri Matisse.

In 1908 - in what is assumed to be a mutually beneficial marriage of convenience - Sonia married the German art dealer Wilhelm Uhde. Soon after meeting the French artist and ‘poet of colour’ Robert Delauney, at Uhde’s Paris gallery near the Luxembourg Gardens, Sonia began an affair with him that would lead to her divorce from Uhde in 1910. The following year she gave birth to Delaunay’s son Charles.

In 1912, Sonia and her husband Robert pioneered a style of colourful purely abstract painting known as Simultanism (or Orphism – an ambiguous term coined by their friend, the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire) – a style which they remained artistically faithful to throughout their lives. Over the following years Sonia exhibited in Paris, Berlin and Stockholm, and on the outbreak of the First World War she and her family fled to neutral Portugal. They lived in the village of Vila do Conde, near Oporto, and were inspired by the warm, clear light of northern Portugal, which they captured in a series of paintings of country markets. After a sojourn in Spain - in Vigo - they returned to Portugal and lived in Valença do Minho until the beginning of 1918. Soon in need of a supplementary income, Sonia began designing avant-garde costumes for the Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

Upon returning to Paris in 1921, she trademarked her colourful and geometric fabric designs and three years later launched a stylish fashion label worn by British socialite Hon. Nancy Cunard and Hollywood star Gloria Swanson. As Sonia said, the Great Depression ‘liberated’ her from the demands of her fashion and interior design business, enabling her to quietly return to painting during the 1930s.

After the Second World War - and Robert’s death in 1941 - she became something of a French national treasure. In 1964 she was the first living female artist to have a prestigious retrospective of her work exhibited at the Louvre in Paris. Towards the end of her life, Sonia – after inauguration into the French Legion of Honour and the well-received publication of her memoirs – even enjoyed a resurgence of commercial interest in her timeless fabric and homeware designs from the 1920s. Her major works feature in public collections across the world.

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SONIA DELAUNAY (1885-1979) Rythme Couleur #1460 Gouache on paper 68 x 56.8 cm (26 ³/₄ x 22 ³/₈ inches) Signed lower right, Sonia Delaunay Executed in 1967 This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Jean Louis Delaunay and Richard Riss.

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VICTOR VASARELY (1906-1997) Vásárhelyi Győző, or Victor Vasarely as he is better known, was born in Pecs, Hungary. He is regarded as the ‘grandfather’ of the early twentieth century Op art movement - a style of which concentrated on creating effects of optical illusion. Vasarely first enrolled at Budapest University in 1925 to read medicine, but he abandoned this pursuit after two years to study traditional academic painting at the Podolini-Volkmann Academy. In 1928, he moved to the Mulhely Academy, the centre for Bauhaus studies in Budapest. It is perhaps here that Vasarely first took an interest in the issue of form - an interest which would continue throughout his life.

In 1930, Vasarely left Hungary to settle in Paris, where he worked as a graphic artist at various advertising firms in the city. After the Second World War, Vasarely pursued his artistic ambitions, establishing an atelier in Arcueil, a suburb of Paris. Following this, he produced artworks in a geometric abstract style, with a minimalist approach to form and colour. Initially, he worked in oils in the techniques of many of the avant-garde art movements of the time, producing compositions in the styles of Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Expressionism. His first exhibition of these works took place at the Galerie Denise René in 1944.

By 1947, Vasarely finally discovered his own idiosyncratic style of abstract art. The artist was significantly influenced by his experience on holiday on Belle Île, off the coast of Brittany. In the ellipsoid shape of pebbles on the beach there, Vasarely discovered an ‘internal geometry’ which he believed comprised the surface of the universe. This experience characterised Vasarely’s oeuvre, and his emphasis on shape, for the duration of his career.

In 1954, Kinetic art, represented by artists such as Vasarely, Calder, and Duchamp, blossomed. Many works were showcased by the Galerie Denise René in an exhibition called Le Mouvement. The first museum dedicated to Vasarely opened at the Renaissance palace in Gordes in the south of France, containing five hundred works by the artist. In 1976, a second enterprise, the Foundation Vasarely in Aix-enProvence, was inaugurated by President Georges Pompidou, housed in a building designed by Vasarely himself. Vasarely died on 15th March 1997, at the age of 90.

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VICTOR VASARELY (1906-1997) RENG-MC Acrylic on canvas 111.8 x 58.4 cm (44 x 23 inches) Signed lower center, Vasarely Signed twice, titled and dated 1984 on the reverse The authenticity of the present work has been confirmed by Pierre Vasarely, and will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné de l’Oeuvre Peint de Victor Vasarely.

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VICTOR VASARELY (1906-1997) Farbwelt Acrylic on canvas 130.6 x 92.1 cm (51³/₈ x 36¹/₄ inches) Signed, titled, dated 1963 (HH) and inscribed 2621 on the reverse Conceived in 1963 and executed circa 1973 The authenticity of the present work has been confirmed by Pierre Vasarely, and will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné de l’Oeuvre Peint de Victor Vasarely.

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JIANG DAHAI (B. 1946) Since graduating from the Central Academy of Arts, Beijing, in 1986, Jiang has cultivated a rich career, and today is considered one of the most prominent Chinese artists.

Born in Nanjing, China, Jiang’s studies and pursuit of art were interrupted by the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, which saw the dominance of Socialist Realism within art. Jiang, who had been planning to attend university the year the Revolution began, put his education on hold, instead choosing to become a teacher. When Jiang did attend university in 1982, while the teaching remained partially in the shadow of the Revolution, he was introduced to broader global tendencies. Jiang became particularly interested in French painting and developed a strong interest in European artists such as Balthus and Morandi.

Jiang left his native country for France the year he finished his studies, and remained there until 2008.

The move was prompted by a desire to learn about Western art, and his hopes of assimilating different artistic traditions from across the globe. While today his practice remains engaged with the subject of Chinese landscape painting, it has been informed by the artistic theories of the West. The typically Western techniques he employs in his work use abstraction to reimagine traditional Eastern subjects and demonstrate clear parallels with Minimalism and American Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rothko.

Jiang has cited abstraction as a way of capturing certain truths within landscapes. His most acclaimed works include his famous cloud paintings, which emulate the appearance of mist and vapour; a motif common in Chinese paintings. To create this effect, Jiang stipples the paint across the canvas – a modern method used predominantly in Western action-painting. This integration of Western abstract painting and Chinese art history is a testament to how Jiang’s work offers a bridge between Eastern and Western art.

Currently residing between Paris and Beijing, he has had retrospectives at The National Museum of History (2015), Taipei in Taiwan (2015) and at the Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2009).

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JIANG DAHAI (B. 1946) Obscuration Acrylic on canvas 150 x 150 cm (59 x 59 inches) Signed and dated on the reverse Executed in 2014

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ANISH KAPOOR (B. 1954) British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor was born in Mumbai to a Hindu father and Jewish mother and studied at London’s Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea College of Art. Kapoor became known in the 1980s for his geometric or biomorphic sculptures made using simple materials such as granite, limestone, marble, pigment, and plaster. His first high profile exposure came as part of the Hayward Gallery’s 1978 New Sculpture exhibition in London. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Kapoor was critically acclaimed for his explorations of matter and non-matter, specifically evoking the void in both free-standing sculptural works and ambitious installations. Many of his sculptures seem to recede into the distance, disappear into the ground, or distort the space around them.

Since 1995, Kapoor has worked with the highly reflective surface of polished stainless steel. These works are mirror-like, reflecting or distorting the viewer and their surroundings. Over the course of the following decade, Kapoor’s sculptures ventured into more ambitious manipulations of form and space. His catalogue of international public commissions is extensive, and includes the Turning the World Upside Down, Jerusalem (2010) installed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; the ArcelorMittal Orbit, (2012) a permanent piece for London’s Olympic Park; and a granite monument commemorating the British victims of 9/11 in New York City’s Hanover Square.

Kapoor’s work features in international public and private collections from Stockholm to Jerusalem. His international solo exhibitions included those at London’s Tate and Hayward galleries, the Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, Reina Sofia in Madrid, the National Gallery of Canada, the Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil, the Guggenheim’s of New York City, Bilbao and Berlin, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Kapoor was the first living British artist to take over the Royal Academy in London in 2009, attracting record crowds of 275,000 visitors, making it the most successful exhibition by a living artist in London. In 2010 Kapoor retrospective exhibitions were held at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in New Delhi and Mumbai’s Mehboob Studio, the first showcase of his work in the country of his birth.

Most recently, Kapoor received the Padma Bhushana (third-highest civilian award in India) in 1912, a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in 2013, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2014. Kapoor even features as a British cultural figure within the newly designed UK Passport and in 2016 he was announced as a recipient of the LennonOno Grant for Peace.

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ANISH KAPOOR (B. 1954) Untitled Ink and gouache on paper 50.2 x 67 cm (19 ³/₄ x 26 ³/₈ inches) Executed in 2000

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OTTO PIENE (1928-2014) German artist Otto Piene was born in Arnsberg and raised during the Second World War, nearby Lübbecke in the north of Germany. He studied at the prestigious Dusseldorf and Munich academies of art and graduated in Philosophy at the University of Cologne.

Seeking to ‘remake’ art in Cold War Europe, alongside artist Heinz Mack, in 1957 Piene founded the pan-European - though Düsseldorf-based - ZERO group of artists whose members included Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Arman, Jean Tinguely, Yves Klein, Henk Peters and Armando. Working from the new ‘ground zero’ of art, Piene and his associates produced ZERO magazine and, with characteristic conceptual austerity, gained critical success over the following decade.

Piene was highly experimental and motivated by non-traditional art materials and techniques. Best known for his paintings made with smoke and fire (Rauchbilder), Piene applied solvent to pigmented paper before setting the work alight to develop organic images in the residual soot.

Exhibiting at Kassel’s Documenta (1959, 1964, 1971), Piene was first exhibited in the United States at the Howard Wise Gallery, in New York City (1966) and was chosen to represent Germany at the Venice Biennale in both 1967 and 1971. During the 1960s he taught in the USA at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1971 became the first Fellow of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies (later becoming its director until 1993).

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OTTO PIENE (1928-2014) Wo Alu und Honig Fließen Fire gouache with aluminium on cardboard 99 x 64 cm (39 x 25¹/₄ inches) Signed and dated lower right, O Piene 72 and titled lower left

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OTTO PIENE (1928-2014) MyMy Fire gouache on cardboard 67.5 x 47.8 cm (26 ⅝ x 18 ⅞ inches) Titled lower left, MyMy; signed and dated lower middle, O Pienne 75

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ANTONI TÀPIES (1923-2012) Spanish painter, sculptor, and theorist Antoni Tàpies is one of the most famous European artists of his generation. Born in Barcelona to a politically active lawyer, Tàpies grew up immersed in Catalan nationalist culture. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and while a student at the German School of Barcelona, Tàpies taught himself to draw and paint. As a seventeen-year-old, he suffered a near-fatal heart attack which resulted in a two-year convalescence in the mountains, where he read widely and pursued his interest in art. After a three-year stint studying law, from 1943, Tàpies devoted himself to art, soon experimenting with differing materials and becoming the best-known Catalan artist to emerge from the Second World War. In 1948, Tàpies helped co-found the first Post-War movement in Spain, Dau al Set, which was connected to both Surrealism and Dada. Initially influenced by Paul Klee and Joan Miró, soon Tàpies began working in a style known as pintura matèrica (matterism) in which non-artistic materials are incorporated into the paintings. This work in mixed media is generally considered his most original contribution to modern art.

Increasingly interested in Eastern and French Existentialist philosophy, on a French government scholarship, in the early 1950s he was able to move to Paris. Here, he experimented with adding paint to clay and marble dust, even using wastepaper, string, and rags such as his Grey and Green Painting (1957).

His Canvas Burned to Matter (c.1960) is an example of these mixed media assemblages that combine the principles of Dada and Surrealism. Influenced by Pop Art, Tàpies began to incorporate more substantial objects into his paintings, such as parts of household furniture. From the late 1950s to early 1960s Tàpies worked with many other Spanish ‘Informalist’ artists. His work of the early 1970s was preoccupied with suppressed symbols of Catalan identity (cultural and political anathemas to Spanish dictator General Franco). In 1974 he made a series of lithographs called Assassins and displayed them in the Galerie Maeght in Paris, in honoured memory of Salvador Puig Antich, critic of the Franco regime.

Alongside his production of pictures and objects Tàpies, was active in the field of interdisciplinary collaborative graphic work, gravitating toward unconventional traditional processes and everyday vernacular imagery such as handprints and footprints as his subject matter. His print work disrupted traditional concepts of ‘high’ art and ‘low’ art, often involving earthy materials like as straw, sand, and dirt. To achieve his innovative techniques, Tàpies worked with specific publishers and printmakers who were inspired by his unique ideas.

His worldwide influence in the realms of painting, sculpture, etchings and lithography is extensive and his work is found in numerous major international collections, including his own foundation in Barcelona. Throughout the span of his life Antoni Tàpies was associated with several art movements and a member of none. However, two years before his death, in recognition of his services to art, the King of Spain created him the first Marquess of Tàpies.

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ANTONI TÀPIES (1923-2012) Serie “U no és ningú” No. 21 Acrylic, collage and pencil on cardboard 50 x 65 cm (19 ³/₄ x 25 ⁵/₈ inches) Signed lower right, Tàpies Executed in 1978 Anna Agustí, Tàpies. Obra Completa vol. 4. 1976-1981, Poligrafa S.A., Barcelona, 1995, p. 158, n. 3401.

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AUGUSTE HERBIN (1882-1960) Born in Quiévy, a small village near the Belgian border, Herbin was the son of a workman. He attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Lille where he produced Post-Impressionist works from 1898 to 1901. Following this period, he moved to Paris where he visited exhibitions of Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat – an experience which prompted him to join the Fauvist movement. Cézanne’s 1907 retrospective at Salon d’Automne and Herbin’s move in 1909 to the Bateau-Lavoir, Montmartre, pushed him further towards modern art, and specifically the Cubist movement. With his studio near those of Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, until 1922, Herbin primarily worked in an ornate style of Cubism.

Between 1922 to 1925, Herbin deployed a more figurative approach inspired by the oeuvre of Fernand Léger. From 1926, he applied himself to organic, often spiral-like forms, before beginning to pursue ‘pure’ geometric abstraction.

As part of this exploration, Herbin co-founded the Salon des Surindépendants in 1929. Two years later, along with Georges Vantongerloo, Theo van Doesburg, Jean Hélion, Hans Arp and František Kupka, he founded the artist association Abstraction-Création, which strove to combine various non-figurative styles. Herbin and Vantongerloo published five issues of an eponymous journal between 1932 and 1936, and during this time he became increasingly interested in strictly two-dimensional painting, with the Italian Trecento serving as a major influence.

After the Second World War, the artist was co-founder and vice president (also president from 1955) of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. In 1946, Herbin developed a compositional system based on the structure of letters, called ‘alphabet plastique’. This geometric vocabulary of coloured shapes partly derived from Goethe’s Farbenlehre or Theory of Colours and the writings of Rudolf Steiner. This compositional system was based on Herbin’s conviction that synaesthetic parallels exist between letters, musical sounds, colours, and forms, such that words and tones can be expressed in painting. For example, according to ‘alphabet plastique’, the letter C is dark red, has the form of a circle or square and corresponds to the solfège syllables ‘do’ and ‘so’. For his work during this period, Herbin interpreted terms and expressions loaded with meaning. In 1949, he published his system of ‘alphabet plastique’ as well as colour theories in L’art non-figuratif non-objectif - writings which took on great significance for a younger generation of artists.

During the 1950s, Herbin was an active designer of tapestries. A lateral paralysis in 1953 forced him to learn to paint with his left hand. Herbin died in Paris at the end of January 1960.

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AUGUSTE HERBIN (1882-1960) Poire, Pomme, Pêche Gouache on paper mounted on board 32.4 x 47 cm (12 ³/₄ x 18 ³/₈ inches) Signed lower center, herbin 1941 The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the late Geneviève Claisse and will be included in the artist’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné, under no. 1292.

It is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Laurent Claisse.

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AUGUSTE HERBIN (1882-1960) Nuit, Voile n. 4 Ink and gouache on paper 26 x 35 cm (10 ¹/₄ x 13 ³/₄ inches) Signed and dated lower right, Herbin 1943 and titled lower left, “nuit, voile no 4” This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Laurent Claisse.

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LÉLIA PISSARRO (B. 1963) Born in Paris, Lélia is the third and youngest child of Hugues-Claude and Katia Pissarro. From a young age, Lélia’s interest in drawing and painting was nurtured by her grandfather, Paulémile Pissarro, who taught her the fundamental Impressionist and Post-Impressionist techniques he had learnt from his father and brothers before him. Lélia sold her first painting to New York art dealer Wally Findlay, when she was only four years of age.

When Lélia turned 11 she moved to Paris where, with the guiding support of her father’s teachings she began to broaden her skill set. She became exposed to new environments and learnt to experiment with abstract styles and subjects. At age 14, Lélia submitted some of these works to the exhibition Salon de la Jeune Peinture at the Luxembourg Museum in Paris. However, being underage, she had to submit these works secretly under the pseudonym Rachel Manzana Pomié.

With her parents dividing their time between France and California, Lélia found herself moving between Tours, Paris and San Francisco, all the while studying Fine Art and Psychology at the University des Beaux Arts. She eventually settled in Paris to teach art at the Moria School and study oil painting conservation under the guidance of a teacher from the Louvre museum. During this time, she began to present her work in solo exhibitions in Paris, Lyon, Mulhouse and Rennes.

In 1988 Lélia married English art dealer David Stern and moved to London. From 1995 Lélia participated in a series of exhibitions entitled Pissarro – The Four Generations, which were held in galleries in London, Tel Aviv, Boston, Austin, San Francisco, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Los Angeles as well as a number of museums in Japan in 1998 and the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2000.

In 2005 following a bout of cancer and a long break from painting, Lélia started a journey into modern art, creating a number of different series: Circles, Shoes, Animals, exploring these until she reached the point of abstraction and minimalism. Developing innovative techniques, she began incorporating in her work new materials such as gold, wax and encaustic paint.

Working today from her London studio located by Richmond Park and the river Thames, Lélia upholds the legacy of painting en plein-air while simultaneously continuing to explore modern techniques.

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LÉLIA PISSARRO (B. 1963) Everything you Touch Turns to Gold Acrylic and gold powder on canvas 146 x 114 cm (57 ¹/₂ x 44 ⁷/₈ inches) Signed and titled on the reverse Executed in 2018 This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the artist.

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SERGE CHARCHOUNE (1888-1975) Russian-French artist and poet Serge Charchoune was born at Bougourouslan in Russia and studied painting at Moscow Academy of Art. In 1912 after deserting the army, he arrived in Paris and immediately enrolled as a student of the Cubist painter Henri Le Fauconnier.

Upon the outbreak of the First World War, Charchoune took refuge in Barcelona, Spain where he befriended exiled Parisian Cubists Marie Laurencin, Albert Gleizes and Francis Picabia. Seizing the cultural moment, during the 1920s Charchoune briefly formed his own Parisian Dada group called Palata Poetov (the House of Poets), created a Russian-language Dada magazine called the Perevoz Dada (the Travelling Dada) and published an anthology of German, French and Russian Dadaist poetry.

Devoted throughout his life to the radicalism and transgressiveness of Dadaism’s anti-art, Charchoune refused to participate in any other movement. However, during the early 1950s his work became more abstract and his palette almost monochrome.

After his 1922 solo exhibition at the famous Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin, Charchoune returned to Paris where he met Ozenfant, leader of the Purist movement. Subsequently, he began to introduce elements of the Purist manifesto to his own work.

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SERGE CHARCHOUNE (1888-1975) Composition Inspirée par le Credo de la Messe en C Mineur de Bach Oil on canvas 116 x 73 cm (45 5/8 x 28 3/4 inches) Signed and dated lower right, Charchoune 1959 This work is accompanied by a certificate from Pierre Guénégan.

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DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965) Damien Hirst was born in Bristol in 1965. He studied at Goldsmiths College in London and first came to public attention in 1988 when he conceived and curated the Freeze exhibition. Showcasing both his work and that of fellow students, Freeze is considered the debut of the Young British Artists, or YBAs. As one of the YBAs who continued to dominate the art scene in the 90’s, many of Hirst’s works are widely recognised, making him one of the most prominent artists of his generation.

Hirst was encouraged to create Freeze by his professor Michael Craig-Martin, who convinced the likes of Nicholas Serota, former director of the Tate museums and galleries, and Charles Saatchi to visit the show.

The attendance of these influential British figures gained the exhibition traction, with Saatchi becoming a main proponent of Hirst and his peers. The YBAs are comprised of leading contemporary figures such as Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, and Tracey Emin, with each artist associated with their own renegade style.

Throughout his art, Hirst takes a direct and challenging approach to ideas about existence. His work calls into question our awareness and convictions about the boundaries that separate desire and fear, life and death, reason and faith, love and hate. Hirst uses the tools and iconography of science and religion, creating sculptures and paintings whose beauty and intensity offer the viewer insight into art that transcends our familiar understanding of those domains.

Hirst lives and works between Devon and London, U.K. He was included in the 1992 Young British Artists exhibition at Saatchi Gallery, London, and in 1995 he won the Turner Prize. Solo exhibitions of Hirst’s work have been held at Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples (2004), Astrup Fearnley Museet fur Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2005), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2008), Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2009), The Wallace Collection, London (2009–10), the Oceanographic Museum, Monaco (2010), the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (2010) and Tate Modern, London (2012).

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DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965) Beautiful I Don’t Want to be a Dead Artist Painting Household gloss and credit card on canvas 213 x 213 cm (83 ⁷/₈ x 83 ⁷/₈ inches) Executed in 2005

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STERN PISSARRO GALLERY IMPRESSIONIST - MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART - SINCE 1964

66 St. James’s Street London, SW1A 1NE, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7629 6662, stern@pissarro.com www.pissarro.art