Colette Brunschwig
Colette Brunschwig (b. 1927) belongs to a generation of French female painters, active in the Parisian art scene since World War II, she was friends with artists and poets such as Yves Klein and Paul Celan. She studied with André Lhote in the late 40’s. In 1952 she exhibited her work for the first time at the Colette Allendy gallery in Paris.
As a representative of the metaphysical abstraction, Brunschwig feeds of French existentialism in a post-war context. Committed in a permanent dialog with literati Chinese painting, and inspired by Chinese artists such as Shitao (Ming Dynasty) and Wang Wei (Tang Dynasty) Brunschwig is working on the «third dimension» in drawing. With the use of ink, she is seeking to transcend the paper, both physically and philosophically speaking.
Her acrylic paintings, ink drawings, gouaches, colourwashes and watercolours forma body of work tirelessly inflected by grey, which is defined as a painterly intermediary for colours, an upwelling of form caught up in the challenges of the undefined abstract motif and the inexorable dissolution of the image and of representation.
Image 1: Colette Brunschwig, Sans titre, 1985
Image 2: Colette Brunschwig, Le paysage orange, 1977
Image 3: Colette Brunschwig, Sans titre, 1950-1960
Image 4: The artist Colette Brunschwig. Photograph by Chantal Marfaing
