jean dewasne biography
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Jean Dewasne
From painting to Antisculptures
and architecture
A total work of art
by Lydia Harambourg
Historian Art critic
Correspondent for “l’Institut, Académie des Beaux-Arts”
Jean Dewasne is one of the masters of French Constructivist Abstraction.
In 1946, he participated in the creation of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, a showcase for concrete art and geometric abstraction, whose legacy he claimed following Herbin, who brought him onto the committee. That same year, he was the first winner of the Kandinsky Prize, along with Jean Deyrolle. A member of the committee, he resigned in 1949.
In 1949, his Traité de la peinture plane (Treatise on Flat Painting) laid the foundations for his future art.
The Abstract Art Workshop
In 1950, Dewasne and Edgar Pillet founded the Atelier d’Art Abstrait, a place for teaching and reflection on the ‘technology of painting’. This short-lived laboratory of abstract art provoked strong reactions. Faced with an offensive lyrical abstraction, Dewasne emerged as an ardent defender of an aesthetic line inherited from the Bauhaus:
‘Abstraction is an ethic, a way of life that adapts.’
He is committed to art that intervenes ‘in direct action with the human community’.
His research into flat painting has led him to evolve from the easel to the monumental with architecture, aware of the essential role played by colour as a unifying and constructive element. Dewasne developed a vocabulary consisting of simple, evolving forms, arranged according to complex rhythms in a baroque spirit with flat areas of bright, contrasting colours, without reference to reality.
The lectures he gave in the Engineers’ Hall and at the Research Centre on Rue Cujas reflect his militant thinking in favour of radical abstraction in the face of socialist realism.
A leading painter at the Galerie Denise René alongside Vasarely, Marie Raymond, Poliakoff, Deyrolle, and his elders Hartung and Schneider, Dewasne contributed to the rise of geometric abstraction in Scandinavia, Belgium, and especially Denmark with his friends Robert Jacobsen and Richard Mortensen.
In 1951, Dewasne painted L’Apothéose de Marat (The Apotheosis of Marat). This immense painting on wood measures 2.50 metres high by 8.335 metres long (purchased by the State in 1982 and now on loan to the Grenoble Museum).
He innovated by using glycerophthalic lacquers, an industrial paint that he applied to aluminium and then to a new, unalterable material, Isorel.
Apothéose de Marat
1951
5 panels
Glycerophthalic paint on wood
250 x 833.5 cm – Dimensions of each panel: 250 x 166.70
National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Pompidou
The Antisculptures
The first in a long series, Le Tombeau de Webern (Webern’s Tomb) 1951 (Centre Pompidou) was painted on the carcass of a racing car bought in a scrapyard in Suresnes and became a symbol of modernity.
Straight lines and curves combine with the three fundamental colours that he inverted: red, green, blue, and yellow shining through by oscillation.
Industrial techniques responded to his aesthetic and philosophical concerns and led him to use unexpected media: car bodies and motorcycle fairings.
Antisculpture
Tombeau d’Anton Webern
1951-1952
Enamel paint on aluminium
151 x 123 x 92 cm
National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Pompidou
At the end of 1953, the Atelier d’Art Abstrait closed. Dewasne terminated his contract with Denise René while continuing to participate in the gallery’s group exhibitions abroad, in the Nordic countries, helping to spread geometric and constructed abstraction beyond France’s borders. He stayed in South America, where he gave lectures, and exhibited in Copenhagen, Brussels and Milan.
Dewasne exhibited again in 1956 in Paris at the gallery recently opened by Daniel Cordier on Rue Duras, then on Rue Miromesnil in 1963, where Jean Moulin’s former secretary, one of Dewasne’s first collectors, dedicated a solo exhibition to him and wrote the preface.
At the height of the triumph of lyrical abstraction, Jean Dewasne’s political commitment to constructive art with a direct impact on social life led him to become involved in public architecture. Having studied architecture and music (he was familiar with the Domaine Musical and was passionate about dodecaphonism and atonality), he brought about the synthesis of the arts in urban planning.
He was responsible for monumental achievements such as the ice rink for the 1968 Olympic Games in Grenoble,
La Longue Marche (The Long March), presented in 1969 at the ARC at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and in 1981 at the Centre Pompidou, intended for the technical high school in Haubourdin (Nord). A chromatic polyphony of 36 enamelled panels with a total length of 88 metres.
In his determination to work towards a total art form in which the viewer plays an active role, Dewasne created a new Antisculpture: Habitacle rouge 1972 (Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Musée Matisse).
Habitacle rouge
1972
Architect: Jean-Claude Lahumière, Paris (France)
Donation from Mrs Mythia Dewasne
Transferred to the Matisse Departmental Museum, Nord Departmental Council on 25/10/2017
© Adagp, Paris – Photo credit: Philip Bernard/Matisse Departmental Museum
In 1975, Dewasne continued his architectural integration work for Renault headquarters as part of a collaboration with contemporary artists (Arman, Vasarely, Dubuffet, Soto, etc.) initiated by Claude-Louis Renard, the car manufacturer. Dewasne created 40 metres of paintings and glycerophthalic lacquers on wood in the computer room. That same year, he received a commission for the Hanover underground.
The meeting of painting and architecture:
the Grande Arche de la Défense 1986–1989
The architect Johan Otto Von Spreckelsen, who was responsible for its design, entrusted Dewasne, whose anti-sculptures he was familiar with, with the creation of the largest painting in the world. Only two sides were to be painted, measuring 100 metres high and 70 metres wide, covering a surface area of 15,280 m² of enamel paint fired at 1200° on steel plates.
The gigantism continued with an impressive work for the newspaper Politiken in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1995. Motifs spread across 800 m² of ceiling space, overlooking all the workspaces.
Colourful Antisculptures are coming to the Centre Pompidou.
We owe Dewasne a debt of gratitude for his colour scheme, following a decision by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, who discovered it during a visit to the artist’s studio on Rue du Bourg Tibourg in 1970, where the heating pipes were painted. The effect is striking.
‘The Pompidou Centre will be colourful,’ writes Dewasne.
Since 1968, the Lahumière Gallery has regularly exhibited Dewasne’s work in its Paris gallery and at international art fairs (notably Art Basel).
Institutional recognition
In 1966, the first retrospective of his works was held at the Kunsthalle in Bern.
He represented France at the Venice Biennale in 1968.
In 1993, he was elected a member of the Institut, Académie des Beaux-Arts, taking the seat of his friend Hans Hartung.
Between 1973 and 1989, successive donations and gifts from Daniel Cordier brought Jean Dewasne’s works into national and institutional collections: Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, CNAP-FNAC, MACVAL, Statens Museum Copenhagen, Musée de la Poste, Paris, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, Cambrai, Dunkirk, Abattoirs Toulouse, etc.
In 2012, Mythia Kolesarova Dewasne, the artist’s widow, made a significant donation to the French State of most of Jean Dewasne’s works and archives, which she had inherited.
This impressive donation, covering the years 1940 to 1990, completes a pre-existing Dewasne collection thanks to the artist’s generosity. The works were distributed among museums throughout France: Amiens, Caen, LAAC Dunkirk, Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Les Sables d’Olonne Sainte-Croix Abbey, Nantes, Pontoise, Rennes, Saint-Etienne, Strasbourg, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, MacVal, Musée d’Art Moderne Ville de Paris, and Centre Pompidou.
In 2014, a major Jean Dewasne exhibition was organised at the Matisse Museum in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, based on the Mythia Dewasne donation.
A tribute to Jean Dewasne will be paid by the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris in 2022.
“La longue marche de Jean Dewasne (1921-1999), a major artist in 20th-century abstract painting”
Dewasne’s intellectual and educational activism underpins his pictorial achievements.
Lydia Harambourg
Historienne de l’art
Detailed biography of Jean Dewasne
1921
Born in Hellemmes, a suburb of Lille. His father was an engineer. He began studying the violin in 1927.
One of his secondary school teachers introduced him to Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.
1937
Visit to Paris for the Universal Exhibition of ‘Arts and Techniques Applied to Modern Life’, which impresses him: Guernica at the Spanish Pavilion, Nazi Germany Pavilion, Soviet Union Pavilion.
He considers Leonardo da Vinci to be his role model.
1939
He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he found the teaching uninteresting, and studied in the ‘Architecture’ department. He frequented the studios of Montparnasse, particularly that of André Lhote.
1941
First exhibition at the L’Esquisse gallery-bookshop in Paris (nudes and still lifes, influenced by Georges Seurat and Henri Matisse). First written reflections.
Fin 1942
He excluded figurative art from his work and temporarily turned to Cubism.
Exhibition at the Galerie Jacquet in Paris.
1943
His first non-figurative painting was exhibited in the ‘Musicaliste’ room at the Salon des Indépendants.
1944
He reunites with his friends from the Lyrical or Informal Abstraction movement: Hans Hartung, Gérard Schneider, Jean Deyrolle, Serge Poliakoff, Marie Raymond… Denise René opens her first gallery on Rue La Boétie in Paris.
Exhibition at the L’Esquisse Paris gallery.
1945
Exhibits with his friends at the Salon des Surindépendants in Paris, visits an exhibition of ‘Concrete Art’ (Vassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Auguste Herbin, Robert Delaunay, etc.) at the Galerie Drouin.
1946
He explored several avenues of non-figurative art, between geometry and lyrical abstraction.
He became friends with Auguste Herbin, whose influence would prove decisive, and with Antoine Pevsner.
With Jean Deyrolle, he received the Kandinsky Prize (1st edition) and became friends with César Doméla, with whom he participated (along with Vassily Kandinsky, Auguste Herbin, César Doméla, Ernest Engel-Park, Hans Hartung, Serge Poliakoff, Michel Raymond, Félix Del Marle, and Gérard Schneider) in an exhibition accompanying a lecture by Auguste Herbin entitled ‘The Evolution of Painting’. Jean Dewasne gave a lecture on ‘Les idées pédagogiques de Klee et Kandinsky’. He became increasingly interested in the concept of contemporary beauty in relation to architecture and industry, mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry and musical atonality.
First exhibition, ‘Peintures abstraites’ (Abstract Paintings), at Denise René with Jean Deyrolle, Michel Raymond, Hans Hartung, and Gérard Schneider.
Alongside Félix Del Marle, Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay, Albert Gleizes, Antoine Pevsner, and Auguste Herbin, he participated in the creation of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, where he presented a painting.
Exhibition at the Drouin Gallery and the Denise René Gallery until 1956.
1947
Joins the steering committee of Réalités Nouvelles (alongside Sonia Delaunay and Jean Gorin), organised by Auguste Herbin until 1955. His paintings still bear the mark of Cubism.
Dewasne, Vassily Vasarely, Robert Jacobsen and Richard Mortensen join the Denise René gallery.
1948
He was preoccupied with the relationship between form and colour, the search for maximum intensity and chromatic vibration, and the rejection of depth.
Thanks to Richard Mortensen, he exhibited in Copenhagen (Tokanten Gallery) alongside Jean Deyrolle, Emile Gilioli, Hans Hartung, Jean Piaubert, Serge Poliakoff, Michel Raymond, Gérard Schneider and Victor Vasarely.
He stayed in Gordes with Victor Vasarely and Jean Deyrolle.
1949
Resigns from the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. Spends ten months with Robert Jacobsen in Denmark and exhibits at the Arne Bruun Rasmussen Gallery in Copenhagen.
As a member of the Communist Party, he advocates art that participates in all areas of social life.
He creates his first mural, ‘La Joie de vivre’ (H: 3m, L: 9m) (cf. Matisse’s painting of the same name, 1905-1906), creates painted sculptures with R. Jacobsen that herald the ‘Anti-sculptures’, creates silkscreen prints for Lautréamont’s book ‘Préface à un livre futur’ (Preface to a Future Book), published in 1950, and writes a monograph on Robert Jacobsen: ‘Le gros Robert’ (The Fat Robert), also published in 1950. Together with Frantisek Kupka, Auguste Herbin and Félix Del Marle, Jean Dewasne donated a painting to the Calais Museum for the creation of a ‘Geometry’ room.
Il donne une conférence : “Les idées théoriques de Kandinsky” au musée Thorvaldsen à Copenhague, et, contre l’art informel, il rédige son “Traité d’une peinture plane” (publié en 1972) qui contient plusieurs études sur le rôle des mathématiques et des géométries de Riemann, Bolyai, Lobatchevski… Cette même année, Auguste Herbin publie “L’Art non figuratif non objectif”, rédigé pendant la guerre.
The abstract-concrete painting claims nothing more than what it is, unlike the figurative painting, where we want the object to replace the work. It symbolises nothing, serves no intermediary role between man and something outside of both. It is not a replacement for what is absent, a substitute for the appearance of an idea or force. It presents itself naked and as it is, and directly provokes sensations and emotions in the viewer through its own means.
Jean Dewasne
Traité d’une peinture plane, février 1949
1950
Together with Edgard Pillet, he founded the Atelier d’art abstrait (which closed in 1953). This forum for exchange welcomed scientists, perception physiologists (Jacob Segal) and artists from around the world, who were able to meet leading figures in abstract art, including Auguste Herbin, Alberto Magnelli and Jean Arp. For three years, Jean Dewasne gave highly appreciated lectures and conferences on the physiology of colours, theories of form and painting technologies. Critics such as Léon Degand, André Bloc, Julien Alvard and Roger van Gindertael were welcomed there. His work, with its use of pure colours applied with a spray gun and its precise, smooth technique, shows the influence of Auguste Herbin.
He met Daniel Cordier, who bought his first paintings.
1951
He uses hardboard and industrial paint (glycerophthalic lacquer). He designs his paintings around the duality of positive and negative, with shapes covering the entire surface of the work, emphasising the flatness of the medium. He created his first ‘Antisculptures’ using car body parts, making use of their hollows, curves and cut surfaces.
First Antisculpture: ‘Tombeau d’Anton Webern’ (Tomb of Anton Webern), in which Jean Dewasne expresses his admiration for the music of Berg, Webern, Schoenberg, Leibowitz, Boulez, Maderna, Stockhausen, and others.
At the Atelier de l’art abstrait (Abstract Art Workshop), he gave his 1949 lecture ‘Les idées théoriques de Kandinsky’ (The Theoretical Ideas of Kandinsky).
He created “L’Apothéose de Marat” (The Apotheosis of Marat) (H 2.60m L 9m) to demonstrate to Roger Garaudy that figurative painters do not have a monopoly on political engagement.
In October, he participated in the creation of the ‘Espace’ group (founders: André Bloc and Félix Del Marle) with, among others, Etiene Béothy, Jean Gorin, Berto Lardera, Richard Mortensen, Félix Del Marle, Victor Prouvé, Victor Vasarely, Simone Servanes… ‘Espace’ sought to create a synthesis of the arts, build a living environment suited to modern man and promote ‘the harmonious development of all human activities’. The group disappeared in 1963.
1952
At the Abstract Art Workshop, lecture by Jean Dewasne, ‘Abstract Art and Dialectical Materialism’.
1953
In February, Jean Dewasne gave two lectures at the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen: ‘Structure naturelle du langage plastique’ (The Natural Structure of Plastic Language) and ‘Réalité vivante de l’expression plastique’ (The Living Reality of Plastic Expression).
‘Badia la Grande’ series.
1953 à 1955
Numerous lectures at architecture schools in South America, particularly at the Escuela Superior de Arquitectura in Lima (Peru): ‘L’art abstrait au sein des connaissances, de la science et des techniques actuelles’ (Abstract art within current knowledge, science and technology), ‘L’Art abstrait et le concret’ (Abstract art and the concrete), ‘Contenus individuel, social et universel de l’art abstrait’ (Individual, social and universal content of abstract art), ‘Composants de l’esprit créateur’ (Components of the creative mind), ‘Structure de la surface’ (Structure of the surface).
The ‘Tombeau d’Anton Webern’ (Tomb of Anton Webern) is presented at the Denise René Gallery with six small Antisculptures.
He designs the cover of the magazine ‘L’art d’aujourd’hui’ (Art Today) – December 1953, including an article by art critic Léon Degand.
Jean Dewasne
in the journal ‘L’Art d’aujourd’hui’ (Art Today), January 1953
‘L’Art d’aujourd’hui’ magazine, December 1953
1954
He married filmmaker and visual artist Mythia Kolesar, daughter of Slovak writer and journalist Milos Kolesar.
Jean Dewasne terminated his contract with the Denise René gallery.
Jean Dewasne
dans la revue “L’Art d’aujourd’hui”, mars 1954
1955
Auguste Herbin is appointed President of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles.
Exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
1956
Jean Dewasne joins the Daniel Cordier Gallery. Auguste Herbin resigns from the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles.
1961
Exhibition in Milan, Lorenzelli Gallery.
1962
First exhibition in New York, Daniel Cordier Gallery.
The great work proposes a dynamic network of attraction within a set of internal variables with multiple mental dimensions.
Jean Dewasne
Traité d’une peinture plane, février 1949
1965
Exhibition in Genoa, La Polena Gallery.
1966
Works on motorcycle fairings (Antisculpture).
First retrospective of his works at the Kunsthalle in Bern.
1968
He created a huge fresco in eight sections for the Olympic Ice Stadium in Grenoble and ‘La Longue Marche’ (90 metres long in 36 panels measuring 2.5 metres each) for the Faculty of Medicine in Lille.
He represented France at the Venice Biennale alongside Arman, Piotr Kowalski and Nicolas Schöffer.
Antisculpture “Baby Doll”
Circa 1975
Glycerophthalic lacquer on PVC / Motorcycle structural component
110 x 65 x 44 cm
1969
Presentation of ‘La Longue Marche’ (The Long March) in Paris and then in Brussels.
La Longue Marche
1969
88 M
Partial view, Exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1982
State deposit, Muses de France Service
Donation by Jean Dewasne, Cambrai Museum Collection
Jean Dewasne
Handwritten note introducing “La Longue Marche”
Centre Pompidou / MnamCci / Bibliothèque Kandinsky
1970
Proposal for a 1,200 m² painting for the former library of the Grenoble Museum Project for the new Faculty of Arts in Nantes.
Colour scheme project for the future Pompidou Centre.
1971
Project for the entrance to the Danish Television House, completed in 1973 (H 3 m, L 6 m).
Exhibition at the Creuzevault Gallery in Paris.
1972
Creation of ‘Habitacle rouge’ (H 4m, L 9.32m, D 4.20m), a penetrable structure made of aluminium panels, comprising a circular fresco and two symmetrical ‘Antisculptures’ placed on a pedestal. It is the only sculpture to feature a text by Jean Dewasne.
Presented alongside La Longue Marche, this work toured Northern Europe, then inaugurated the new wing of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh (USA). He created the project ‘La Muraille Antipode’ for the Italie-Gobelins metro station project. ‘Cerveaux mâles’ series (until 1975).
He began his collaboration with Régie Renault. He worked on truck body parts, which he called Antisculptures, and created the ‘Cerveaux Mâles’ (Male Brains) series.
1973
Creation of ‘Magic-Ballet’ (H 3.33m L 10m) for the Soto Museum in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela.
1974
Exhibition at the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk (Denmark).
1975
Creation of ‘Jet-Underground’, two 110-metre-long works for the Hanover underground, as well as four murals, including a ‘Murale des dames’ (10 metres long) for the computer room at the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt.
1978
Exhibition at Kulturhuset, Stockholm.
1979
Danish industrialist Nils Olé Ehrenskjold commissions him to paint his company (Gori Factory) in Kolding, Denmark. Dewasne paints 20 tanks, including two 30-metre-high tanks, connected by a network of tubes (total length 7 km). Paintings preserved in situ.
Exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Caracas, Venezuela.
Usine Gori, Kolding, Danemark
1979
State deposit, French Museums Service
Donation by Jean Dewasne Collection, Cambrai Museum
1981
Jean Dewasne participated in the creation of the Ouvroir de Peinture Potentielle (Workshop for Potential Painting). The aim was to invent forms and mathematical, logical and playful constraints to support the work of painters and visual artists. There he published Les Forces plastiques (Plastic Forces) and Je suis le point de fuite, la bataille de San Romano vue par un des lapins (I am the vanishing point, the battle of San Romano seen by one of the rabbits).
Exhibitions: Castle Museum in Kolding, Denmark; Museum of Modern Art, Centre Georges Pompidou.
1982
Completion of the project, begun in 1977, of three tapestries created for the Mobilier National, Manufacture des Gobelins (each measuring 7 metres high).
The main greatness of abstract-concrete art is its ability to create emotions that were previously unknown.
Jean Dewasne
Traité d’une peinture plane, février 1949
1983
La Poste is issuing a stamp entitled ‘Aurora-Set’, based on an original design.
1986-1989
Danish architect J. Otto von Spreckelsen wins the competition to design the Grande Arche de la Défense in Paris. He commissions Jean Dewasne to create the largest mural ever made: 15,280 m².
The project was modified following the death of J. von Spreckelsen in 1987, but J. Dewasne created two murals measuring 100 metres high and 70 metres wide for the interior of the Grande Arche.
1989
Exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art-Centre Georges Pompidou – ‘The 1950s’
1990
Monumental anti-sculpture ‘Homage à Spinoza’ in Zeevenaar, the Netherlands, for the engine room of the P. Stuyvesant tobacco factory.
1991
Exhibition at the Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop (Germany).
Exhibition of Antisculptures at the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology in Libourne.
1992
Antisculptures series ‘Rondes-Bosses’ paintings on single-sided car body parts. Seville World Fair: presentation of a model of a Soviet submarine painted by Mr Gorbachev and donated to Denmark in 1991.
He was appointed to the Order of the Legion of Honour and made a Knight of the Danish Daneborg Order by the Queen of Denmark.
1993
On 8 December, he was elected to the painting section of the Academy of Fine Arts, taking the seat of his friend Hans Hartung.
1994
Recipient of the Medal of the Academy of Architecture, awarded for the artist’s monumental work.
Publication of an article on ‘Creation’ in the aesthetics journal Révision, issues 2 and 4, with colour reproduction of the mural painting of the Grande Arche de la Défense.
1995
He painted the ceilings of the headquarters of Copenhagen’s leading daily newspaper, Politiken.
Visible from the outside, they are reflected at night on the city’s cobbled streets.
Journal Politiken, Copenhague
1995
Ceiling in the reception area and the Editor-in-Chief’s office
State deposit, French Museums Service
Donation by Jean Dewasne – Cambrai Museum Collection
1997
He is elected associate member of the Royal Academy of Belgium.
1999
Jean Dewasne passed away in Paris on 23 July.
2000
Inauguration of ‘Cotral Atac’, a wall mosaic created for the Piazza di Spagna metro station in Rome.
2012
The widow of artist Mythia Dewasne has donated her husband’s entire collection of works from his Paris studio to the French State.