Claude Viallat

In the beginning of the 1960s, in the stimulating and lively cultural climate of France, Claude Viallat (Nimes, 1936) was moved to revisit the genealogy of abstract painting and the seduction of Art Informel. Without neglecting Cezanne and Matisse, he identified a primitive form with distinct and inimitable characteristics, essential and almost hypnotic. Abstraction first appeared in his work during his formative years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, when he regularly visited Raymond Leguelt's studio and where he met, among others, Robert Rauschenberg, Jackson Pollock, Sam Francis and Morris Louis. It was in this period that he definitively abandoned verticality; no longer using an easel, he painted on the floor, sometimes outdoors in sunlight, applying a mixture of gelatin, pigment and water directly onto the untreated canvas. While in the group Ecole de Nice, he exhibited from 1966 to 1969 with artists belonging to such movements as Nouveau Realisme (Arman), Fluxus (Ben Vautier, Bernar Venet).