Pierre Restany

Pierre Restany (* June 24, 1930 in Amelie- les- Bains, † 29 May 2003 in Paris) was an internationally known French art critic, cultural philosopher and the founder and namesake of the group New Realists.

Life and work

Pierre Restany, born in the department of Pyrénées- Orientales, grew up in Casablanca, moved to France in 1949, attended the Lycée Henri IV in Paris and received his academic training in France, Ireland and Italy. In Paris he came into contact with the art world. His first works he wrote for the magazine since 1952 Cimaise. He sat for the painter Jean Fautrier one, learned in 1955 Yves Klein know and dealt with the lyrical abstraction in his publication Lyrisme et abstraction, 1958.

Yves Klein

In October 1955 Pierre Restany met the young painter Yves Klein know in Paris exhibited his Monochrome Editions in the first Lacoste. Restany developed to this idealistic artist's personality, spontaneous affection, and found his ideas to an emotional connection. Small, though utopian dreamer, but had a clear artistic stance was as " [ ... ] a tightrope walker between genius and charlatan [ ... ] " instructed in the dissemination of his approach to art critic. The artist found in Restany a congenial interpreter, who understood his artistic approach intuitively, an ability that small called a " direct communication ". Restany was not only the closest confidant of the artist, he became its most vehement advocate and put then on the literary and theoretical fundamentals of Klein's artistic positions.

Already at their first meeting at Lacoste she agreed that Restany for the exhibition catalog Yves - should write Propositions monochrome (monochrome proposals ) Gallery Colette Allendy the foreword. The exhibition opened Restany in February 1956 with a speech. Saying " La minute de vérité A tous les intoxiqués de la mashine et de la grande ville, les fénétiques you rhythme et les masturbés du reel, YVES propose une très enrichissante cure de silence asthénique [ ... ] "(" The minute the truth. Allen of the machinery and the big city intoxicated, the frenetic followers of rhythm and beats Realitätsmasturbierern YVES a very enriching treatment of asthenic silence before [ ... ] ") began.

The exhibition Yves - Propositions monochrome was subsequently shown at the Galerie Apollinaire in Milan, effective May 31, 1957 in collaboration with the Galerie Iris Clert at Alfred Schmela in Dusseldorf and in the same year at the Gallery One in London. In April 1958, the Galerie Iris Clert presented the performance Le Vide ( The Void ) by Yves Klein before, which was legendary and whose opening alone 3000 visitors came. The invitation card Restany invited the art friends to attend the " manifestation of a perceptual synthesis " that justified Klein " [ ... ] picturesque search for an ecstatic and immediately communicable emotion [ ... ] ". Restany formulated during the exhibition entitled The emptiness in which were determined to be more appropriate " The specialization of sensibility in its original state as a permanent pictorial sensibility " to. In the exhibition, not works of art were on display, the spotless white, illuminated by neon tubes walls of the gallery rooms were completely empty.

After the exhibition " Monochrome painting" in 1960 in the Städtische Galerie Leverkusen small and Restany founded with friends the " International Klein Bureau ", which drove forward the patenting of the legendary IKB (International Klein Blue ), Klein's preferred painting surface.

New Realism

In the 1960s Restany, on the current art, the New Realism, began to publish. He became the head of the theoretical group in the style was so inconsistent as the Surrealists and American Pop Art On April 16, 1960 was a first exhibition, Les Nouveaux Realists, at the Gallery Apollinaire in Milan, of the name of the group coined. The first manifesto entitled manifestos of the New Realists was signed on 27 October 1960 by nine artists in Atelier Yves Klein. At the new loose association of artists included as a signatory next Restany Yves Klein, Arman, Jean Tinguely, Daniel Spoerri, Martial Raysse, Raymond Hains, Jacques de la Villeglé and François Dufrêne, later followed by César, Mimmo Rotella, Gérard Deschamps, Niki de Saint Phalle and Christo. What united them was the idea of ​​the relationship between art and reality. Restany philosophy was:

Between 1961 and 1967, the Galerie J in Paris, run by his second wife, Jeannine de Goldschmidt- Rothschild, an important place for Restany philosophy. Au 40 ° ( Quarante degrés ) au dessus de Dada ( Dada forty degrees above ), the second manifesto, was also the title of the first exhibition at the Galerie J in May 1961. Gallery showed in the following years, artists such as Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Since 1963 Restany worked with the art and architecture magazine Domus and wrote quarterly reviews in the magazine Ars, the group of New Realists broke up in 1970. Published in 1974 Pierre Restany the first monograph on Yves Klein at Hachette in Paris, the second publication entitled Yves Klein followed in 1982, which became the standard work on the artist.

Since the 1960s, Pierre Restany traveled through Europe, Asia and the Americas. In the summer of 1978 he undertook together with the artists Sepp Baendereck and Frans Krajcberg a boat trip on the Amazon. The travel experience he reflected in " Le Manifeste du Río Negro", which he wrote down in the jungle. 1988 Restany held in an exhibition of Günther Uecker in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow a series of lectures on the state of Western art. In January 1989, he met in Milan Dmitri Likhachev, a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the first president of the Russian Foundation for Culture, who had traveled to the opening of an exhibition on the Russian avant-garde. Since 1999 he devoted himself at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris to promote young contemporary artists. In spring 2002, Pierre Restany participated in the exhibition curated by Sarah Wilson Paris. Capital of the Arts 1900-1968 at the Royal Academy in London in part.

Shortly before his 73rd birthday Restany died on 29 May 2003 in Paris; his grave site is located in the Cimetière Montparnasse.

Reception

In 2000 published Les éditions Jacqueline Chambon in Nîmes an anthology of theoretical writings Pierre Restany under the programmatic title " Avec le New Realism, sur l' autre face de l' art".

Writings

• The power of art. Hundertwasser, the painter - king with the five skins. From the French by Philip Mattson. Bags, Cologne 2001, ISBN 978-3-8228-6598-9
• Yves Klein. From the French by Rudolf Kimmig. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich, 1982, ISBN 3-921375-71-1
• Le Livre Rouge de la Revolution picturale. Edition Apollinaire, Milan 1969
• Le Timbre d' Artiste. Privilégié Lieu de l' identité poétique. In: Marie- Claude Le Floc'h Vellay ( Fwd ): d' Artistes. Timbre. Editions Musée de la Poste, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-905412-21-6, pp. 11-12; Pp. 209-210 ( French / English )
• Un vraie européen. In: Karl Ruhrberg (ed.): Alfred Schmela. Gallery · pioneer of avant-garde. Wienand, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-87909-473- X, pp. 148-152 (French / German )