Fabienne Verdier

Fabienne Verdier (born 1962, Paris, France)^[1] is a painter who lives and works in France.

Career

Fabienne Verdier’s artistic path has taken her through successive phases of research, all focused on her fundamental areas of interest, including the dynamism of forces of nature, the instantaneous and enduring, and movement and immobility.^[2] By adopting new tools and ever-larger brushstrokes, she proposes to enable viewers to better access the infinite world of energy and transformations she extensively explores.^[3]

Her latest research into the dynamics of forms has led her to explore possible links between music and painting, specifically between pictorial and sonic lines. As an artist in residence at the Juilliard School in New York City for several months, she worked with some of its foremost faculty members, including Darrett Adkins, Kenny Barron, William Christie, Philip Lasser and Edith Wiens, as well as with many students. A documentary by filmmaker Mark Kidel relating the extensive experiments carried out in Verdier’s studio-laboratory at Juilliard is expected to be released in 2016.^[4]

In 2014, the Pinakothek der Moderne of Munich invited Verdier to create an installation of seven works on the theme of transformation. Entitled Mélodie du réel, it was presented at the Herrenchiemsee Palace, together with key works by German and American artists from the museum’s permanent collection.^[5][6] Also that year, the city of Hong Kong organized the first retrospective of Verdier’s work: over thirty-five paintings and drawings, loaned mainly by public and private collections and covering the last thirty years of her career, were exhibited at Hong Kong City Hall with the support of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.^[7]

In 2013, in the conceptual phase of the new National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing,^[8] architect Jean Nouvel asked Verdier to assist him, soliciting her thoughts and drawing on her knowledge of dynamism to shape a building that would transpose the simplicity, energy and power of a single brushstroke.^[9]

In 2012, Verdier discovered she could dematerialize her brush, leading her to develop a new technique that she called “Walking-Paintings”.^[10] The following year, Galerie Jaeger Bucher in Paris held a solo exhibition featuring these new works.^[11]

In 2009, Verdier embarked on an intense period of research and painting. Long fascinated by the strength of the color spectrum but also the mystery of intriguing immobility in works by the 15th century Flemish primitives, she created a large body of sketches and paintings, drawing particular inspiration from six important works: Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele (1436) and Portrait of Margaret van Eyck (1439) by Jan van Eyck; Death of the Virgin (c. 1481) by Hugo van der Goes; the Moreel Triptych by Hans Memling (1484); and the Simon Marmion diptych Mater Dolorosa and Man of Sorrows (c. 1460).^[12][13]

The Groeninge and Memling museums in Bruges would ultimately exhibit the results of Verdier’s research side by side with their inspirations in the museum galleries. Daniel Abadie acted as visiting curator and edited a compendium entitled Fabienne Verdier, L’Esprit de la Peinture.^[14] A concurrent show of Verdier’s preparatory drawings and notebooks was held at the Erasmus House museum in Brussels.^[15] Fabienne Verdier et les Maîtres Flamands, notes et carnets by Alexandre Vanautgaerden was published by Éditions Albin Michel.^[16]

As she was expanding her research into spontaneity, Verdier also turned her interest to early Italian frescos and specifically to Quattrocento masters. During this period, the Torlonia family in Rome commissioned her to create a contemporary fresco of monumental paintings (5m x 8m) for a reception room in the family palazzo. Her research related to the project was recorded in studio notebooks and reproduced in Fabienne Verdier, Palazzo Torlonia (2010), by Eric Fouache and Corinna Thierolf.^[17]

In 2007, the Musée National d'Art Moderne (Centre Pompidou) in Paris acquired its first Verdier painting.^[18] In 2005, drawn by the energy and dynamism of the works shown at Verdier’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland at the Alice Pauli Gallery in Lausanne, the Hubert Looser Foundation of Zurich commissioned her to create a series of paintings to resonate with Abstract Expressionist and Minimalist works in its permanent collection by American artists including John Chamberlain, Donald Judd, Willem de Kooning, Ellsworth Kelly and Cy Twombly.^[19]

Several other museums have since included Verdier’s Looser Foundation paintings in exhibitions, including “Art of Deceleration, from Caspar David Friedrich to Ai Wei Wei,” Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, Germany, 2011;^[20] “My Private Passion – Foundation Hubert Looser,” Vienna Kunstforum, 2012;^[21] “The Hubert Looser Collection,” Kunsthaus Zürich, 2013;^[22] and “Formes simples,” Centre Pompidou-Metz, France, 2014.^[23]

In 2002, following her return to France after nearly a decade of intense work and immersion in China, Verdier wrote about this apprenticeship inside a radically different system of thought. Her account, Passagère du Silence, published by Albin Michel in 2003, won several prizes, was translated into six languages and sold over 230,000 copies.^[24][25]

In 1985, at 22, Verdier left for China to study at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing. She chose at the same time to work alongside and train with the last great Chinese painters who had survived the Cultural Revolution, whom she persuaded to transmit their mastery of spontaneous painting and aesthetic theories despite continued bans.^[26][27] After becoming the first foreign woman to be awarded a post-graduate diploma in fine arts by the institute, Verdier began to progressively create her own new abstract painting.^[28]

Creative Process

Fabienne Verdier’s creative process most often involves three phases.^[29] First, she records her research, thoughts and observations in notebooks, sketches and inks on paper. Then she prepares the canvas by applying several layers of pigment and glaze in order to obtain the desired degree of vibration, saturation and depth of color. Finally, standing directly on the stretcher and using tools of her own invention, she shapes the paint matter to express fundamental life forces.

Exhibitions

Since Fabienne Verdier’s first solo exhibition in 1983, her works have since been widely exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Her museum shows include the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Center for Contemporary Art, Hong Kong, Chongqing Fine Arts Centre, China and an important solo exhibition, The Spirit of Painting: A Tribute to the Flemish Renaissance will take place at the Groeningemuseum in Bruges in March 2013.

Her other exhibitions were also presented at French Embassy Beijing, Maison de la Chine, Galerie Joyce, Palais Royal, Paris, Pacific Cultural Foundation, Taiwan and the Art Plural Gallery, Singapore.^[30]

Solo Exhibitions

2013 Groeningemuseum, Bruges, Belgium^[31]

2013 Art Plural Gallery, Singapore^[30]

2009 Galerie Jaeger Bucher, Paris

2007 Galerie Alice Pauli, Switzerland

2004 Abbaye de Silvacane, Provence, France

2003 Galerie Ariane Dandois

2001 Chapelle des Beaux-arts, Paris

1997 Pacific Cultural Founadtion, Taipei

1996 Galerie Joyce Ma, Paris

1993 Hong Kong Arts Centre

1992 Maison de la Chine, Paris

1991 French Cultural Center, Beijing

1989 Fine Arts Museum, Chongqing, China

1983 Palais des Beaux-arts, Toulouse, France

Collections

Public Collections

• Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris
• Centre National des Arts, Paris
• Honda Group, Tokyo
• Ministriere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris
• Chinese Ministry of Culture, Beijing
• Musée Cernuschi, Paris
• Foundation Hubert Looser, Zurich
• Foundation Francois Pinault

Private collection

• Colletion Monique Barbier-Mueller Museum
• Collection Stéphane Custot
• Collection Ariane Dandois
• Colletion Bruce Kovner
• Collection Hubert Looser
• Collection Elie de Rothschild
• Collection Uli Sigg
• Collection Olimpia Torlonia

Publications

• Fabienne Verdier - introduction by Michael Peppiatt, edited and published by Art Plural Gallery 2013
• Fabienne Verdier: Painting Space by Doris von Drathen, published by Edizioni Charta, Milan 2013
• Fabienne Verdier: Palazzo Torlonia by Philippe Chancel, published by Éditions Xavier Barral, 2011
• Entre Ciel Et Terre by Fabienne Verdier, published by Albin Michel, 2007
• Entretien Avec Fabienne Verdier by Charles Juliet, published by Albin Michel, 2007
• The Dragon's Brush: A Journey to China in Search of a True Master by Fabienne Verdier, published by Trumpeter 2006
• Passagere Du Silence by Fabienne Verdier, published by Albin Michel, 2005
• Unique Trait de Pinceau by Fabienne Verdier, published by Albin Michel, 2001

References

External links

• Official website
• Fabienne Verdier's exhibition at Art Plural Gallery
• Fabienne Verdier - Galerie Jaeger Bucher, Paris