(Paris 1898–1964 Chatenay) Abstract nude, signed, dated Fautrier 57, mixed media on blotting paper, 50 x 65 cm, framed, (PP)

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Comité Fautrier, Paris.

Provenance:
Formerly Collection Dominique Fautrier, Paris;
Private Collection, Europe

Literature:
Palma Bucarelli, Jean Fautrier, Il Saggiatore, Milan 1960, page 402, n° 645, ill. page 403, n°. 645

«THE SILHOUETTES OF MOVEMENT»
It is evident that an artist as accomplished as Fautrier, a friend of writers, poets and a collector of books and manuscripts, was interested in styles of writing and acquainted with the most famous forms of calligraphy. References to calligraphy are immediately clear in many of his portraits of nudes. From this point onwards, the art of writing expresses itself as a language that has achieved fame, one known as informal and which - we believe - was initiated by Fautrier.

Where some artists attempt to depict a naked body, Fautrier calligraphies it. With masterful and fluid gestures he lends the nude a form, one not content to exist, but rather one constantly reinventing itself. Fautrier’s nudes become the nudes of our imagination. Each glance or view produces the silhouettes one aspires to see.

The basic structure of the drawing, the body, is here, and in the end it is our glance that dresses or undresses it. This free depiction could as easily represent the body as its movement. The nude is no longer on the canvas or on the paper, instead it moves in accordance with our imagination, these sensual shapes, which the body writes with its own movements.
(© Nazim Kadri, Excerpt from the book in preparation Fautrier Artist, Fautrier Collector)