François Dufrene

François Dufrêne (* 1930 in Paris, † 1982 ) was a French artist representative of Lettrism, founder of poésie sonore and co-founder of the New Realism in the 1960s.

Life and work

Dufrenes work can be assigned to any artistic medium. Like many of his peers, he blew the conventional concept artist: he is a painter, object artist, essayist, poet and singer.

Developed as an experimental poet Dufrêne from 1953 within the sound poetry the " poésie sonore " and could theoretical guidance for Henri Chopin, Carl Friedrich Claus, Bob Cobbing, Maurice Lemaître, Franz Mon, Josef Anton Riedl and Gerhard Ruhm afford.

As a painter he was in 1960 in Paris, co-founder of the artist group New Realism, which was suggested by the critic and theorist Pierre Restany. The founding declaration of the New Realists signed Arman, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Jacques de la Villeglé while César, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle, Gérard Deschamps and Christo later, the movement joined.

The works of art by Dufrenes consists of panel paintings, in which he represents by a Dé-coll/age-Technik backs of billboards, while colleagues like Raymond Hains and Mimmo Rotella turned towards the visible front. Like the other members of the group, Dufrêne tried to integrate this technology with the reality of daily life in his art. He contributed so significantly to the development of object art and the early forms of performance art.

Exhibitions (selection)

Works in public collections (selection)

• Centre Pompidou, Paris
• Municipal Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
• Galerie d'Art Contemporain des Musées de Nice, Nice.