Le retour à la figuration dans les années 80

Jean-Charles Blais,
Rémi Blanchard,
Loïc Le Groumellec

28 february – 5 june 2017

In the early eighties, in France as well as throughout Europe and the United States, the return of figurative painting is a jubilant break after two decades of very intellectualized art by the artists of Minimal and Conceptual Art.
Yvon Lambert, who had made himself known defending these radical movements, presented this new generation, which literally broke out with very figurative paintings often linked to urban life, such as these torn metro posters or tarpaulins used as free canvases.

Three artists were associated at the time. Loïc Le Groumellec, very attached to the symbolism of his native Brittany, Jean-Charles Blais, exhibited at the Yvon Lambert gallery for fifteen years, and Rémi Blanchard, who died of an overdose in 1993. Blanchard’s workshop and all his archives had burned down three years earlier in old warehouses along the basin of the Villette in Paris. Only a few works had been acquired before this drama. They are exhibited here at the museum for the first time.