jean dewasne: THE WORK
MONUMENTAL ARTWORKS
The moment of creation is a moment of life at its most intense.
Jean Dewasne
Traité d’une peinture plane
by Lydia Harambourg
Historian Art critic
Correspondent for “l’Institut, Académie des Beaux-Arts”
Confronting architecture:
A total art form
Dewasne adapts his art to the technology of his time.
With his Antisculptures, it became necessary to find ever larger spaces in order to be at the heart of the city and bring art into everyday urban life.
A utopia made possible by technology. He anticipates software by using a process of photomontages that trigger playful visual surprises in the real world with the antisculptures Cerveaux-Mâles (Tour Montparnasse).
By liberating colour, he creates random spaces, spatial distortions through continuous transformations following the Möbius strip model according to non-Euclidean geometry.
Antisculpture D2
« Cerveaux Mâles »
1972-1975
Glycerophthalic lacquer on steel sheet
190 x 190 x 76 cm
Monumentality imposes its rule.
Convinced of the unifying role of abstract art and its place in urban architecture, Dewasne changed scale in order to create a total work of art.
In 1968, he created murals for the ice rink that hosted the Winter Olympics in Grenoble, followed in 1970 by those for the former library of the Grenoble Museum.
This Napoleon III-style building, lit by vast domes, was covered with a series of panels 60 metres long, 15 metres wide and 15 metres high. The shiny lacquered paint trapped the light, creating reflective effects.
Created on plasticised supports stretched over wooden frames, the Grenoble series was rolled up when dismantled, leading to its destruction (account by Jean-Claude Lahumière to his daughter Diane Lahumière).
Grenoble 70
1,200 m² (partial view)
Former Grenoble municipal library
State repository, French Museums Service
Donation by Jean Dewasne, Cambrai Museum Collection
Integrating painting into architecture
His desire to integrate painting into architecture was realised in spectacular fashion with La Longue Marche.
Commissioned by the city of Lille and completed in 1967, this monumental work was intended for the technical college in Haubourdin (Nord) but was probably never installed. Inspired by Mao’s account of the ‘Long March’, this masterful work is composed like a sonata, presupposing a fragmented journey, interrupted by trials evoked by different rhythms and a chromatic polyphony orchestrating the thirty-six compressed panels, fired in a kiln to a total length of 88 metres. As it could not be deliberately contemplated in its entirety, it was presented in 1969 at the ARC at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and in 1981 at the Centre Pompidou.
When Dewasne’s donations were made to the State and presented in 2014, curator Patrice Deparpe found only one panel at the Musée de Villeurbanne. The others remain untraceable. All that remains of this monumental work are the two printed editions produced at the time by Jean-Claude and Anne Lahumière following their meeting with Dewasne in 1968. They presented this silkscreen series at the first Basel fair in 1970.
La Longue Marche
1969
88 M
Partial view, Exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1982
State deposit, French Museums Service. Donation by Jean Dewasne, Cambrai Museum Collection
In 1972, on the advice of Jean-Claude Lahumière, Dewasne conceived a round structure: Habitacle rouge 1972 (Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Matisse Museum) in which the viewer enters and experiences the work through interaction (see Antisculptures).
Habitacle rouge
1972
Architect: Jean-Claude Lahumière, Paris (France)
Donation by Mrs Mythia Dewasne
Transfer 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’s 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: two works measuring 110 metres in length.
Jet-Underground 2
1975
110 M
Hanover Underground, Germany
State deposit, French Museums Service, Jean Dewasne donation, Cambrai Museum Collection
His Antisculpture in situ, created in 1979 for the Gori Vaerk chemical factory in Koldong, Denmark, embodies the expectations he set out in his 1949 treatise: to bring abstract art into all spheres of everyday and urban life.
It consists of twenty cubic tanks with concentric patterns arranged in three rows of vats and 7 km of tubes running through the factory.
Antisculpture
Gori Factory, Kolding, Danemark
1979
State deposit, French Museums Service
Donation Jean Dewasne Collection Cambrai Museum
His desire to integrate his works into architecture reached its zenith with the construction of the Grande Arche de la Défense (1986–1989), which synthesises painting and architecture. A dialogue of shapes and colours in space allows for ‘communication of the spirit’.
The architect Johan Otto Von Spreckelsen, responsible for the design of the Grande Arche de la Défense, entrusted Dewasne, whose anti-sculptures he was familiar with, with the creation of the largest painting in the world. Only two sides were created, measuring 100 metres high and 70 metres wide, with a surface area of 15,280 m² of enamel paint fired at 1200° on steel plates:
‘To fulfil the architect’s wish and express the connections that unite thought and human beings, I started with graph theory and imagined tree-like combinations that represent the complexity of the relationships between ideas,’ wrote Dewasne in 1996.
Jean Dewasne in his studio
in front of the Grand Arche panels
Undated
State deposit, French Museums Service
Donation by Jean Dewasne,
Cambrai Museum Collection
Photograph of the model of the Grande Arche de la Défense
Undated
State deposit, French Museums Service
Donation by Jean Dewasne, Cambrai Museum Collection
Diagram showing the arachnid viewpoints described by Jean Dewasne at levels 8, 16 and 24
Reproduced in Acte d’œuvre, Volume 3 M.E.S by Catherine Arborati, March 2007, Page 53
Private collection
View of a corridor in the Grande Arche de la Défense
Excerpt from the video ‘Paris-Rome’, commissioned by Jean Dewasne
The gigantism continued with an impressive work for the Politiken newspaper in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1995.
Motifs spread across 800 m² of ceiling space, overlooking all the workspaces.
Journal Politiken, Copenhague
1995
Ceiling of the reception area and the Editor-in-Chief’s office
State deposit, French Museums Service,
Jean Dewasne donation,
Cambrai Museum Collection
Cotral Atac
2000
Mosaic fresco, Piazza Di Spagna Station, Rome Metro
Created after Jean Dewasne’s death in 2000
Private collection