From 13 December, the Château of Montsoreau-Museum of contemporary art will pay tribute to François Morellet, father of Minimalism, who died this year.
Following the tribute paid on 7 November at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Château of Montsoreau-Museum of contemporary art would like to pay tribute to this artist from Cholet, whose international reputation has enabled French art to shine on a global scale.
François Morellet’s production is closely linked to the history of Conceptual Art, the basis of the permanent collection of the Château of Montsoreau-Museum of contemporary art.
After having created the François Morellet Prize in April 2016 in collaboration with the Department of Maine et Loire and the Journées nationales du Livre et du Vin, Château of Montsoreau, a new museum of contemporary art in the Loire Valley, is putting a spotlight on François Morellet’s work by installing a work on the façade of the building dedicated to temporary exhibitions.
The artistic gesture
Passing through the glass walls of the five French windows of the building hosting the temporary exhibitions, a work entitled « Door-to-door constrained curve » representing a lemon yellow adhesive curve, will be installed on December 13, 2016, in collaboration with Danielle and Frédéric Morellet.
It was in 1969 in Amsterdam (Galerie Swart) that François Morellet created the first ephemeral adhesives that he glued directly to the walls of emblematic buildings: the Galliera Museum (1971), the Kunstverein in Hamburg (1971), the Fine Arts Museum in Grenoble (1972), the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden (1977).
In 1954, François Morellet painted for the first time an oil painting on four wooden panels: « Arc de cercle brisé en 4 » which became a very representative principle of his systems.
In 1980 in Duizel in the Netherlands, François Morellet also applied it to architecture, on a set of buildings: « Fragmentation of lines and neon curves ».
According to this principle dear to the artist, the door-to-door constraint curve brings the different intervention surfaces closer together, then draws one or more lines on the whole. These intervention areas are then removed to find their initial positions (or real positions in terms of architecture).
François Morellet, father of Minimalism
Painter, engraver and sculptor, François Morellet is considered as one of the major actors of geometric abstraction in the second half of the 20th century.
A pioneer of systematic painting in France, his work is in line with geometric and constructivist art.
For Morellet, the work of art refers only to itself. It aims to control the creative process and demystify the romantic mythology of art and the artist. The rigorous application of the notions of geometry brings over the years a spatial approach that places him at the forefront of concrete or minimal art.
International artist using multiple supports (canvases, paintings, adhesives, neon lights, building surfaces…), he has been highly regarded since the 1970s in France, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States, manifesting himself in a large number of public and private co