Jean Miotte "It's a Beautiful World"
The Chelsea Art Museum
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"Abstraction is the figuration of the soul," says Jean Miotte. He points to a momento, a snapshot or mirror of an intense emotion. Paralleling his biography with the phases in his work, he creates monochromatic black paintings while he suffers with his Hungarian friends who were confronted with Russian tanks in 1956. He opened his studio for his Hungarian friends, who found refuge there. It is not astonishing that Jean Miotte was the subject of the important one-man exhibition in Hungary organized for the 40-year memorial of 1956.
And how can one explain that he painted black-and-white paintings when he was invited for the inauguration of the re-opening of the Museum Sursock in Beirut, after many years of civil war? He had decided to paint - acknowledging that he was invited as a strong colorist - especially colorful paintings which would convey the idea of a possible future. But each time he stood in front of an empty canvas and set out to prepare an exhibition, a black-and-white painting emerged.
As a young man he started to paint with the intense wish to be able to capture the energetic beauty of choreographers and dancers in the Russian ballets in London in the 40s. "These are three examples which deny the general idea about abstraction. Abstract painting can express in three words what others describe in a complete novel." - Jean Miotte
[Image: Jean Miotte "Nowhere" (1995) Oil on canvas 195 x 520cm]
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from October 03, 2009 to December 31, 2009