FRANÇOIS MORELLET: Les règles du jeu

Few artists have enjoyed such a long and illustrious international career, pursued with playful invention at more than 130 solo exhibitions which have included being honoured with a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2011, as well as exhibitions at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Modern Art Oxford and MoMA, New York.

Since he first began making work in the 1950s, Morellet (b. 1926 Cholet, France) has been engaged in creating work which has expanded the very definition of what abstract art can be, whilst also seeking to free the artist from his subjective function in the act of making. This pioneering approach has included using chance and simple mathematical formulas to produce complex grids and patterns for his paintings, and in his role as a founding member of the influential French collective, Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), making playful and often disorientating installations which demand active participation from the spectator.

 

Morellet’s work is held in numerous important public collections around the world, including Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA and The Guggenheim Museum but it is the element of play and playfulness which continues to animate and inspire this great artist to create work in his 9th decade from his childhood home in the town of Cholet in the Loire region of France.