Jean Messagier, Les sexes du printemps, XX sec, oil on canvas, signed lower right, titled lower center.

SIZE: cm. 39 x 47 - SIZE WITH FRAME: cm. 50 x 58 x 4

Provenance: 

Paris, France, private collection; 

Jean Messagier had his first solo exhibition in Paris at Galerie Arc-en-Ciel in 1947. From 1945 to 1949 the artist worked under the influence of Pablo Picasso, André Masson, Paul Klee and François Desnoyer, his professor at École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris. Messagier deliberately broke away from his expressionistic form of Post-Cubism; his inspirations now focused on Jean Fautrier and Pierre Tal-Coat to develop a personal vision in which he renders "light...approached abstractly." Jean Messagier is often associated with Lyrical abstraction, Tachisme, Nuagisme, Art informel and paysagisme abstrait, though the artist himself had never accepted any labels, and had always refused the distinction between abstraction and figuration.