Figuration Libre
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The “Figuration Libre” is an artistic movement of the beginning of the years 1980, appeared in a context of “serious” art, minimalist and conceptual.
In several countries, young artists propose a figurative and coloured painting. Neo-expressionism (Junge Wilde) in Germany, Transavantguardia in Italy, Bad Painting in the United States with Julian Schnabel, Figuration Libre in France.
The paternity of the Figuration Libre denomination is allotted to the Fluxus artist Ben Vautier.
This movement, very mediatized in the years 1980, was constituted around French outstanding figures like Remi Blanchard, François Boisrond, Robert Combas, Hervé Di Rosa and Richard Di Rosa, Louis Jammes. Between 1982 and 1985, these artists expose on several occasions with their American counterparts: Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, Tseng Kwong Chi, and inter alia, Crash (exhibitions in New York, London, Pittsburgh, Paris,…).
The Figuration Libre falls under the prolongation of artists and historical movements whose specificity was the opening to marginalized forms of expression, as the Cubism had opened with African and Oceanian art, Surrealism with the childrens and "art brut" drawings, Pop art with publicity and comic strip.
The artists of the Figuration Libre have, through their works, taken “freedom” to make “appear” all forms of art without border of cultural kind and geographical origin, without hierarchy of values between high and low culture. Their works is appropriate in turn, the fine arts and the applied arts, outsider art and official art, Western and non Western art,…
