• Les idées pédagogiques de Klee et Kandinsky (1946, Paris, Cujas Street Research Centre)
• Les problèmes actuels de l’art abstrait (1949, Copenhague, ThorvaldsenMuseum )
• Les idées théoriques de l’art abstrait (1951, Paris, Atelier d’art abstrait)
• L’art abstrait et le matérialisme dialectique (1952, Paris, Atelier d’art abstrait)
• Structure naturelle du langage plastique (1953, Copenhague, Thorvaldsen Museum)
• Réalité vivante de l’expression plastique (1953, Copenhague,Thorvaldsen Museum)
• Lectures delivered in Lima, Academy of Architecture
• Ethique pour l’art abstrait (1955, Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts)
• Art objectif (1958, Paris, Sorbonne)
• Création (1978, Stockholm, Kulturhuset)
• Conception (1978, Stockholm, French Institute)
• Nature et art abstrait (1981, Boulogne, Cultural Center)
• L’art construit (1981, Paris, Centre Pompidou, as part of the Paris-Paris exhibition)

1971

• Le Problème du mur, conversation with Jacques Putman, l’Oeil, September-October, 1971.

1972

• De la théorie au Concept, conversation with E. Mavrommatis, Opus, N° 37, 1972.

1973

• Jean Dewasne et la théorie de l’objectivité, by Emmanuel Mavrommatis, April 1973.
• Jean Dewasne, by Gassiot Talabot, Art International, May 1973.
• L’art et l’environnement by Maurice Bruzeau. Revue française des télécommunications. October 1973.
• L’art actuel en France by Anne Tronche, Ed. André Balland. pp. 47-49, and pp. 56-60, 1973.

1974

• Jean Dewasne by Wolfgang Sauré, Das Kunstwerk, January 1974.
• Théorie et méthode dans le travail de Jean Dewasne, by Emmanuel Mavrommatis, Cimaise, N° 115-116, March-April1974.

1975

• Les contres Courbes de Dewasne, Otto Hahn, Express, 21-7-1975.
• Du Chevalet au Chassis Renault, Bernard Teyssedre, Le Nouvel Observateur, 28-7-75.
• Jean Dewasne Muraliste, Rudolf Lange, Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, 20 September 1975.

2014

Catalogue of the exhibition “Dewasne la couleur construite. De l’Antisculpture à l’architecture”

Musée départemental Matisse du Cateau-Cambrésis, musée de France,
From 22 March to 9 June 2014
An exhibition of national interest.

Directed by: Patrice Deparpe
Somogy Editions

2006

JEAN DEWASNE – A few words of introduction

Ariane Coulondre

Curator at the National Museum of Modern Art – Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris

Excerpt from thesis – 3rd cycle, 2006

‘He is a quiet lad, capable of bizarre ideas, surprising discoveries and great dynamism whenever he is in the company of cheerful chaps. Obviously, his painting resembles him: it is the work of a reasonable lyricist.’ “

With these words, Pierre Descargues paints a portrait of Jean Dewasne, a young painter aged twenty-eight, then at the forefront of the defence of abstract art in post-war Parisian circles. The phrase is effective and undoubtedly touches on the heart of what makes his thinking and his work so original. Jean Dewasne’s art brings together two trends that historical quarrels had once and for all established as antithetical: the classical and the baroque, or, in our time, the search for monumental rigour and the desire for exaltation.

Jean Dewasne was born on 21 May 1921 in Hellemmes, a small town in northern France, now part of the urban development of Lille. His father was Flemish and his mother was from Limousin, and he grew up in a cultured, Catholic family. His father and uncle, both engineers, passed on their love of science to him. From an early age, the young Dewasne showed a keen interest in music. He practised the violin assiduously and maintained a lifelong passion for contemporary music. He also took an interest in painting at a very early age, producing his first oil paintings at around the age of twelve. He pursued a solid classical education, studying philosophy up to the sixth form in Brussels, Bourges and then Paris. Enrolled at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in architecture, he also followed the classical training in painting, which interested him little. On the other hand, he was fascinated by the debates of his time and the young painter completed his academic knowledge in the studios of Montparnasse, notably that of André Lhote. His first exhibition took place in 1941. Influenced by Seurat and the Fauves, he then moved closer to Cubism. During the war, isolated and unaware of the research of his predecessors, particularly abstract artists, he developed his own ideas. Instead of painting objects directly, he studied the transition from shadow to light. Around 1943, he arrived independently at works in which the subject was no longer recognisable and thus discovered abstract art ‘by trial and error’, as Michel Ragon put it. In 1944, the same year as Kandinsky, his paintings were exhibited in the small gallery L’Esquisse. After the Liberation, Dewasne made abstraction his cause, alongside Hartung,

Schneider, Deyrolle, de Staël and Poliakoff. Despite the virulence of the debates at the time, which is difficult to imagine today, he remained an ardent defender of the abstract cause and participated in all initiatives: the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, the magazine Art d’Aujourd’hui, exhibitions and discussions at the Denise René gallery. His talent was recognised immediately: in 1946, he received the first Kandinsky Prize, awarded to a promising young abstract artist. His painting at the time was marked by chiaroscuro. ‘In a network of thick yet subtle black lines, patches of light pierced through,’² described Descargues. His early research also explored the use of materials. Experimenting with new techniques, he sometimes added sand to his paint, giving his works a rough texture.

But his style evolved rapidly and soon the composition broke apart. In 1947-1948, he began the ‘Déchiquetés’ series. In Tiburce (1947), the flat areas of colour stretch abruptly into large jagged shapes, revealing the brushstrokes. The following year marked a turning point towards greater clarity. The painter now favoured a smooth, shiny surface embellished with precise, contiguous shapes in flat areas of bright colour. The negative-positive formal system (based on the alternation of forward and backward shapes), already present in the Déchiquetés, was theorised in his seminal work, Traité d’une peinture plane, written in 1949. In it, Dewasne reflects in depth on the means and goals of the modern artist and logically develops his own formal system, based on the flatness of the painting and the rejection of spatial illusionism. This was applied, for example, in his large Apothéose de Marat (1951), a heroic painting of monumental dimensions (9 metres long). In 1950, Dewasne founded the Atelier d’art abstrait (Abstract Art Workshop) with Edgard Pillet, a place for teaching and sharing. A young cosmopolitan avant-garde flocked there to listen to lectures on the history of abstract art and courses on painting technology, despite the outcry of those who feared the institutionalisation of abstraction. In response to the cross-fire of attacks from defenders of figurative art and detractors of the ‘geometric’ movement, Dewasne wrote numerous articles and gave many lectures, through which a solid theoretical thought process emerged. It was during this period that the painter created his first major anti-sculpture, the famous Tomb of Anton Webern (1951-52), a car boot that had been straightened and painted inside and out, the first work of a new genre that he would develop throughout his life.

The year 1954 marked a new era in his life. After breaking with the Denise René gallery, Jean Dewasne left for South America to exhibit his paintings and spread his ideas. This long journey gave him the opportunity to discover the ancient art of Peru, about which he wrote enthusiastic articles. On his return, lyrical abstraction was triumphing in Paris, but Dewasne persisted in his own path, combining rigour and dynamism. The year 1966 saw his first major retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Bern. From that time on, the painter received numerous commissions from all over Europe. Every year, he made the art news with increasingly monumental projects. In 1967, he created a mural for the Palais de Glace in Grenoble. In 1968, he represented France at the Venice Biennale. The following year, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris exhibited his Longue Marche, which stretched over 90 metres. In 1970, he created a 1,200 m² mural environment for the Musée de Grenoble. Dewasne’s intense activity grew over time. In the 1980s, it culminated in his greatest work: a commission for four murals, each 100 metres high, for the Grande Arche de la Défense. Covering more than 15,000 m² of wall space, it can be considered the largest painting in the world. In 1993, he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, taking the seat previously occupied by his friend Hans Hartung. He died in Paris in July 1999, at the age of seventy-eight, leaving behind a rich and coherent body of work.

This brief biography calls for a few comments. First, it is striking to note how quickly Jean Dewasne developed his own style, which he clearly theorised in 1949 and to which he remained faithful throughout his life. His reflections, disseminated through numerous writings, are always informed by his practice, just as his works bear witness to a close alignment with the theoretical concepts he develops. However, the unity of his approach and the continuity of his style avoid the trap of repetition through the evolution of his work towards the architectural dimension and openness to public space, which are closely linked to his social convictions.

However, the consistency of his work has been less emphasised than the original position he occupies between two movements clearly identified by art historians within abstraction: the geometric movement and the lyrical trend. Indeed, although Dewasne was a fervent advocate of rationally constructed art, he rejected the label “geometric”, which he considered too reductive³. The synthesis he achieves could be summarised by this balance: flexibility in his logic and rigour in his lyricism. Hence the feeling that Dewasne defies categorisation, which is also evident when reading his biography. Through his training, between tradition and progress, Dewasne copied living models and antique plaster casts, as was customary, while being deeply influenced by Cubism. This ambivalence towards tradition is reflected in his desire to be at the forefront of his time⁴ without hiding his scholarly knowledge of art history or his great admiration for the painters of the Italian Renaissance. Although raised Catholic, Dewasne nevertheless displayed strong Marxist convictions. But his communist sensibility in no way prevented him from defending abstract art, which was condemned by the Party. Finally, although he rejected a certain mystical tendency in art, due to his materialist position, he did not renounce talking about spirituality and recognising art as a means of achieving ‘the enrichment and fulfilment of other people’. What may seem like a paradox at first glance is, in my view, one of the characteristics of Jean Dewasne’s work and thinking. His position reconciles seemingly opposing points of view and is immediately dialectical, going beyond predefined frameworks.

¹ Pierre Descargues, « Petit dictionnaire des artistes contemporains, Jean Dewasne », in Arts, 4 february 1949.

² Ibidem.

³ During a radio interview conducted by Pierre Descargues on France Culture (for the programme Les Arts et les Gens on 6 January 1992), Dewasne denied this description. :
‘What a change, because you accepted the term “abstract geometry” for many years?
No, no… I never did!’

⁴ He states, for example: ‘Things are so different today from what they used to be that, quite frankly, we can no longer ask anything of our elders’ (‘Qu’est-ce que l’avant-garde en 1958 ?’ [What is the avant-garde in 1958?], in Les Lettres françaises, 5-11 June 1958, p.6). ⁵ Jean Dewasne, ‘What is the avant-garde in 1958?’, in Les Lettres françaises, 5-11 June 1958, p.6. ⁶ Before studying art history, I took a year of advanced mathematics.