Archive

Camille Bryen

Camille Bryen (1907–1977) was a major figure in the French avant-garde after the war, at the crossroads of poetry and plastic arts. An heir of the Dada spirit, he develops a free and experimental work, where writing, drawing, engraving and painting interpenetrate in the same poetic and dreamlike quest. Considered as one of the initiators of tachism and lyrical abstraction, Bryen has been exploring unconventional processes since the 1930s. — wax, smoke, materials — preferring accident, gesture and spontaneity. His painting, which he conceived as a « cosmic function », exceeds the only visual perception to reach a more inner and intuitive dimension. Through the notion of d« abhumanism »It seeks to free the creation of any formal or anthropocentric constraint, dissolving forms in order to better reveal its tensions. His work, both instinctive and thoughtful, is characterized by a rich graphic universe, where gesture energy, language games and exploration of the unconscious mix.