Pierre Fichet French, 1927-2007

EARLY LIFE AND ARTISTIC TRAINING

Born in Paris on 10 August 1927, Pierre Fichet’s parents were hat-makers and collectors. Fichet developed a passion for painting from a very young age and took painting lessons from the Italian neo-impressionist painter Dominique Aldighieri, a family friend, at the age of 14. Aldighieri trained him in landscape painting. Fichet continued his studies at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris before taking drawing lessons at a private studio in the French capital.

ABSTRACT PAINTING

Pierre Fichet turned to abstract painting once and for all in 1952, inspired by religious influences. Raised by atheist parents, Fichet converted to Catholicism in his youth. His abstract canvases bore religious titles – such as Moines de Zurbaran and Voile de Véronique – until the end of the 1950s, after which he stopped titling his works. The artist would return to using titles for large canvas works in the 1980s. Influenced by his faith, Fichet began a study on the theme of the Stations of the Cross in 1964. He took up work on the project again at the end of his life, in 2006, creating a group of 14 oil paintings, each measuring 65 x 54 cm. The work, a true pictorial testament, was exhibited for the first time in 2008, after the artist’s death, at the Abbey Church of Essômes-sur- Marne.

THE MULTIFACETED WORK

In the 1960s, Pierre Fichet created a number of stage sets – for William Shakespeare’s King Lear, for the Grenier de Toulouse theatre company in 1966, and for the ballet Espace at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse in 1968.

He also worked on a number of monumental projects, including a series of paintings covering 18 metres of walls at the Hôpital Saint-Antoine in Paris in 1965, and a 50-metre-long mosaic for the Lycée Technique in Auch in 1968. These two projects were commissioned under the French “1% artistic” scheme (an initiative whereby, when public buildings are built or extended, a sum of money is set aside for the creation of one or more works of art specially designed for the site in question).

In 1965, the art critic Michel Ragon created the Groupe International d’Architecture Prospective (GIAP), an association of intellectuals concerned with research into architecture and urban planning. The group brought together the architects Yona Friedman, Paul Maymont, Jean-Claude Bernard, Pascal Haüsermann, Claude Costy, Jean-Louis Chanéac, Manfredi Nicoletti, Édouard Utudjian, René Sarger, Biro & Fernier, and Guy Rottier, as well as the film-makers Jacques Caumont, Jean Herman and Jacques Polieri and the artists Pierre Szekely, Victor Vasarely, James Guitet, Mathias Goeritz and Nicolas Schöffer. At Michel Ragon’s request, Pierre Fichet became an “observer member” of the group.

THE BATEAU-LAVOIR

Pierre Fichet set up his studio at the Bateau-Lavoir in 1981 and shared the space with his friend, the painter Claude Georges, for a year. The Bateau-Lavoir was an artists’ studio and residence located in the Montmartre district of Paris, at 13-13 bis Place Émile-Goudeau. The owner of the house had it converted into artists’ studios in 1889, dividing it into around twenty small one-room flats, each with a glass roof. The studios were arranged on either side of a corridor reminiscent of the passageways of an ocean liner, which is how the name “Bateau” (French for “boat”) was coined. The artist Max Jacob, who moved there in 1907, is said to have added “Lavoir” (the French for “bathhouse”) to the name in a touch of irony, as the place was particularly dilapidated – indeed, the house had only one water point for its 25 tenants. This lack of facilities was to have an impact on the works of the artists who lived there. Max Jacob, for example, used the black smoke from his paraffin lamp and even dust for his works, and in 1912, Picasso made his first collage by grafting a piece of oilcloth onto one of his paintings. Artists from all over the world would take up residence there: Kees van Dongen in 1905, Juan Gris in 1906, Constantin Brâncusi, Amedeo Modigliani, Max Jacob in 1907 and Diego Rivera in 1908, to name but a few. As such, the Bateau-Lavoir represents a legendary venue in the Parisian art scene.

RECOGNITION

Pierre Fichet presented his work to the public for the first time in 1948, when he took part in the Salon des Indépendants. He would go on to participate in the Salon until 1954. Fichet’s work was also included at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1952 and later at the Salon d’Automne in 1986, 1989 and 1991.

He had his first solo exhibition in 1952 at the Maison des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Looking back at that moment, he said: “In 1952… there were about three or four Parisian galleries willing to exhibit works by abstract painters. All the others, and there were a great many of them, turned down these scums, who at best were described as ‘decorators’. This hatred gave us an advantage: those who considered the profession of painting as a way of building a career and getting rich by selling their work gave up on abstraction. Towards the end of the 1950s, when abstraction became more respected, if not more loved, and some of the stars of the art world had Rolls-Royce cars, sumptuous country houses and lavish lifestyles, we would see a host of painters convert; I think it’s still the case today, but at the time, you had to believe in it to keep going.” (Pierre Fichet, Gérard Xuriguera, Les Années 1950. Peintures. Sculptures.Témoignages., Arted Art Editions, Paris, 1984)

The artist very quickly gained the admiration of gallery owners and critics. Exhibited at the Galerie Arnaud on numerous occasions between 1954 and 1969, Fichet naturally developed close relationships with the gallery’s other artists The bookseller Jean-Robert Arnaud opened his gallery in Paris at 34 Rue du Four in 1951 and was immediately embraced by the American artists John Koenig, Jack Youngerman and Ellsworth Kelly, all three of whom had received support from the G.I. Bill, which enabled them to work in Paris.

Jean-Robert Arnaud thus became an important advocate of the Lyrical Abstraction movement, representing the painter Pierre Fichet, as well as Huguette Arthur Bertrand, Albert Bitran, James Guitet and Gérard Schneider, among others. Jean-Robert Arnaud founded the famous journal Cimaise in 1952 – which championed abstract artists – with the support of art critics such as Michel Ragon and Pierre Restany.

Fichet was also represented by the Protée galleries – in Toulouse and Paris – and the Galerie Olivier Nouvellet. The artist was exhibited abroad for the first time in 1955, at the Galerie Saint-Laurent in Brussels. In 1959, Fichet took part in the first Paris Biennial, which was inaugurated by André Malraux, French Minister of Culture, at the Musée d’Art Moderne.

In 1957, the art historian Herta Wescher wrote the following about Pierre Fichet in the journal Cimaise: “For him, the act of painting is akin to religious worship, and it is in meditation that his pictorial visions are born. The biblical subjects that predominated in his early figurative paintings are revived in today’s abstract compositions; liberated from traditional iconographic dogmas, their mystical meaning is diffused in subtle reflections of light, in the strange radiance of colours.” The following year, Pierre Restany wrote in Cimaise: “A greater freedom of gesture and a lyrical imagination of the pictorial expanse… The rhythmic integration is complete, the space arranged in its totality. Fichet’s art, which avoids systematic divisions and the effects of successive planes, gains in intensity and depth.”

Pierre Fichet also received support from the critics Geneviève Bonnefoi, Georges Boudaille, Pierre Cabanne, Michel Seuphor, Gérard Xuriguera, Patrick-Gilles Persin and Lydia Harambourg.

Pierre Fichet also took part in several museum exhibitions: Dix-neuf peintres français at the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, Germany, in 1955; De la rive droite à la rive gauche at the Musée de Verviers in Verviers, Belgium, in 1962; Promesses tenues and Une aventure de l’art abstrait at the Musée Galliera in Paris in 1965 and 1967 respectively; L’envolée lyrique – Paris, 1945-1946 at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris in 2006; and Peintres abstraits des années 1950 at the Abattoirs in Toulouse in 2007.

Fichet’s works are included in the following public collections: the Centre National des Arts Plastiques in Paris, the Musée d’Arts de Nantes, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain (FRAC) – Normandy in Caen and the Abattoirs in Toulouse.

Pierre Fichet died on 8 January 2007 in Poissy, France.