François Morellet
Encyclopedia
François Morellet is a contemporary French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 painter, engraver, sculptor and light art
Light art
Light art is a form of visual art where main media of expression is light. Light has been used for architectural aesthetical effects throughout human history. However, the modern concept of light art emerged with the development of artificial light sources and experimenting modern art...

ist. His early work prefigured Minimal art and Conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

, and he has played an important role in geometrical abstraction over the past half century.

Career

After a short period of figurative/representational
Representation (arts)
Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements...

 work, Morellet turned to abstraction
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

 in 1950 and he adopted a pictorial language of simple geometric forms: lines, squares and triangles assembled into two-dimensional compositions. In 1961, he was one of the founders of the "Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel" (GRAV), with fellow artists Francisco Sobrino, Horatio Garcia-Rossi, Hugo DeMarco
Hugo Demarco
Hugo Demarco was an Argentine-born French painter. Born in Buenos Aires, he relocated to Paris, where he joined a community of expatriate South American painters including Julio Le Parc and Jesús-Rafael Soto. Apart from his artistic career, he has served as a trainer for the PUC rugby...

, Julio Le Parc
Julio Le Parc
Julio le Parc is a modern Latin American kinetic artist born in 1928 and active mainly in Argentina. He is also an Op artist.-External links:**...

, Jean-Pierre Yvaral
Jean-Pierre Yvaral
Jean-Pierre Vasarely , professionally known as Yvaral, was a French artist working in the fields of op-art and kinetic art from 1954 onwards. He was the son of Victor Vasarely.-Life and work:...

 (the son of Victor Vasarely
Victor Vasarely
Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian French artist whose work is generally seen aligned with Op-art.His work entitled Zebra, created by Vasarely in the 1930s, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op-art...

) and Joël Stein
Joel Stein
Joel Stein is a journalist who wrote for the Los Angeles Times and is a regular contributor to Time.-Early life:Stein grew up in Edison, New Jersey and attended J. P. Stevens High School, where he was a writer and entertainment editor for Hawkeye, the student newspaper...

, François Molnar and Vera Molnar (the last two left the group shortly after) http://www.fondation-salomon.com/molnarknifer2.php. Morellet began at this time to work with neon tube lighting
Neon lighting
Neon lighting is created by brightly glowing, electrified glass tubes or bulbs that contain rarefied neon or other gases. Georges Claude, a French engineer and inventor, presented neon tube lighting in essentially its modern form at the Paris Motor Show from December 3–18, 1910...

.

Since the 1960s, Morellet has worked in various materials (fabric, tape, neon, walls...) and has investigated the use of the exhibition space in terms similar to artists of installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...

 and environmental art
Environmental art
The term environmental art is used in two different contexts: it can be used generally to refer to art dealing with ecological issues and/or the natural, such as the formal, the political, the historical, or the social context....

. He has gained an international reputation, especially in Germany and France, and his work has been commissioned for public and private collections in Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and the U.S.A.

Work

For Morellet, a work of art refers only to itself. His titles are generally sophisticated, show some word play, and describe the "constraints" or "rules" that he used to create them. Like other contemporary artists who use constraints and chance (or the aleatory) in their works (John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

 in music, the Oulipo
Oulipo
Oulipo is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians which seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais...

 group in literature), Morellet uses rules and constraints established in advance to guide the creation of his works, and he also allows chance
Randomness
Randomness has somewhat differing meanings as used in various fields. It also has common meanings which are connected to the notion of predictability of events....

 to play a role in some of his compositions.

His rigorous use of geometry tends to create emotionally neutral work, and has placed him close to Minimal art and Conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

 in his aims. He shares a particular affinity to the American artists Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly is an American painter and sculptor associated with Hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and the Minimalist school. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing the simplicity of form found similar to the work of John McLaughlin. Kelly often employs bright colors to...

, Frank Stella
Frank Stella
Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...

 and Sol LeWitt
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....

.
  • Series: Répartitions aléatoires ("Chance divisions") from the 1950s
    • Répartition de 16 formes identiques - painted after his visit to the Alhambra
      Alhambra
      The Alhambra , the complete form of which was Calat Alhambra , is a palace and fortress complex located in the Granada, Andalusia, Spain...

       of Grenada
      Grenada
      Grenada is an island country and Commonwealth Realm consisting of the island of Grenada and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea...

  • Series: Trames from the 1950s
  • Series: Désintégrations architecturales ("Architectural disintegrations") from 1971
  • Series: Géométrées from 1983
  • Series: Défigurations from 1988
  • Series: Déclinaisons de pi ("Versions of pi
    Pi
    ' is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter. is approximately equal to 3.14. Many formulae in mathematics, science, and engineering involve , which makes it one of the most important mathematical constants...

    ") from 1998
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