Composition, 1972

Oil on canvas 

Signed lower right, 

dated May 1972 and numbered 703 on the back. 

Dimensions: 100 x 81 cm, with frame: 123 x 105 cm

 Origin

          • Private collection.

 Bibliography

        •Catalogue raisonné-Jacqueline Boutet-Loyer (No. 703 reproduced)

 Exhibitions

           •Paris 1973, Seine Gallery

 Camille Bryen is a poet, a poet of signs, words, and color. He was one of the initiators of lyrical abstraction. Called the "father of

tachism”, he wanted to dissolve form in favor of non-form.

A poet linked to the Dadaist movement, it was only after the war that he gave free rein to his graphic activity.

At the beginning his painting is violent in colors then from the 60s, his language becomes more subtle. The pale as muted colors are

laid down with discreet touches, mosaics of luminous and colorful touches whose balance is broken by the projection of fragmented lines.

There is a contradiction between his pictorial work, a suave, delicate and measured abstraction, and his protest intentions and statements.

In 1926 he came to Paris. It is said that it was André Breton who brought him back in his luggage on his return from a surrealist congress.

It was as a poet that he entered the group of surrealists and the initiated circles of Saint Germain des Prés and Montparnasse.

He met Wols and actively participated in the discovery of automatic expressions. He tried to achieve an autonomous language that was no longer controlled.

through rational thought but through the psyche with the desire, like the Dada movement, to wipe the slate clean of all ideological or aesthetic constraints.

He exhibited at the “Surindépendants” Salon from 35 to 38.

In 1947, he organized exhibitions with Matthieu which brought together Arp, Atlan

Hartung, Wols, Picabia…He exhibits at the Salons des Réalités Nouvelles and then regularly at the Salon de Mai.

Four private exhibitions took place in Paris from 1952 to 1956, then in Milan and Vienna.

Major retrospectives of his work took place at the Musée du Havre in 1972, at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1973 and finally in 1997 at the Musée de Nantes, his hometown.

He is present at all major events in France and abroad.

Museums:

 In Paris: National Museum of Modern Art; Pompidou Center, Vitry sur Seine contemporary museum.             

 • In France: Nantes, Le Havre, Lyon, Dunkirk, Dijon, Grenoble, Rouen, Lille, Marseille, Rennes, Saint Etienne, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Tourcoing, Tournus.

  • Internationally: New York(Mus.of Mod.Art), Oslo(Nasjonasgal), Rome (Gal. Nat. d’art Mod.), Jerusalem, Locarno, Basel, Lisbon(Fond.Gubelkian), Basel ( Kunst mus.), Skopje, Wiesbaden.