JEAN MIOTTE & LA DANSE
Une abstraction chorégraphique

Exhibition: October 17 – November 30, 2023

When I look at a painting by Jean Miotte, I have the feeling that he has taken on the role of a character, letting loose on his canvas like a dancer performing. I get the impression that these gestures are a kind of visual extension, as if his movements have left a trace.

As Prima Ballerina at the Paris Opera since 2014, I rehearse my choreographic routines every day in order to execute movements that are as pure and fluid as possible. I imagine my hands as paintbrushes drawing in space. Likewise, when I am doing my daily rond de jambe exercises at the barre, I trace lines on the floor with my tiptoes.

All of this technical work involving movement, from arabesques, jetés and piqués to turns, portés and more, enables me to attain a certain form of freedom when I am on stage so that I can express myself fully through my gestures and portray my roles naturally and spontaneously, just like Jean Miotte in front of his canvas.

Amandine Albisson
Prima Ballerina at the Paris Opera

Prima Ballerina at the Paris Opera, Amandine Albisson joined the Paris Opera Ballet School in 1999 at the age of ten years old and went on to join the corps de ballet in 2006.

She was named Prima Ballerina on 5 March 2014 following a performance of the ballet Onegin – choreographed by John Cranko to music by Tchaikovsky – in which she played the role of Tatiana.

Her repertoire includes Bolero by Maurice Béjart, Swan Lake and La Bayadère by Rudolf Nureyev, Romeo & Juliet by Sasha Waltz, Carmen and Le Rendez-vous by Roland Petit, Afternoon of a Faun by Jerome Robbins and L’Histoire de Manon by Kenneth MacMillan, among others.

Amandine Albisson is a Knight (Chevalier) of the French Ordre National du Mérite.

Amandine Albisson is an ambassador for the Association Quatre Couleurs, which builds bridges between art, fashion and crafts and champions the Made-in-France movement.

Jean Miotte
From energy to gesture,
From movement to dance

“I have a passion for dance and choreography. I dream of a magnificent synthesis of painting, music and choreography.” (1)

So wrote Jean Miotte in his autobiography L’Élan dans le défi at the dawn of the 21st century. With more than fifty years of creative work behind him, the artist was telling us the story of his work, from the beginnings of his artistic career to international acclaim.

Let us start in the late 1940s. The former mathematics student Jean Miotte had a thirst for life – hospitalised for tuberculosis following his military service (2) in 1946, he began to draw and paint during his long months of convalescence. Like his friend Sam Francis, for whom painting was an outlet after a serious plane crash that left him bedridden for a time, Miotte spontaneously associated painting with movement as a way to escape inactivity and immobility. Despite his precarious state of health (3), which was a cause for great concern, the artist radiated life. Luckily, Miotte recovered and went on to pursue his artistic endeavours in Paris, a city brimming with artistic activity in a period of reconstruction after the deprivations of war. Miotte experienced the Liberation of France on a personal level, a whole new world of possibilities opening up to him. The young artist spent his days between museums and free art schools in Montparnasse, such as the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the studios of Othon Friesz and Ossip Zadkine, where he had the opportunity to work with live models. He sketched their bodies, already drawn to the idea of movement.

It was through his Russian friends, some of whom were dancers in the Ballets Russes de Colonel W. de Basil, that he came into contact with the world of dance. In 1948, the artist followed his Russian friends to London and Monte Carlo for the first time to see where the ballets were performed. In London, he met the dancers Zizi Jeanmaire (4) and Wladimir Skouratoff (5), with whom he became close friends. “In Covent Garden, I went to see the performances,” wrote Jean Miotte, “I discovered sets by Rouault, Matisse and Picasso, and Diaghilev’s ballets directed by Colonel de Basile [sic].” (6) Indeed, Miotte was discovering a whole new world: the world of dance, which had entered the modern era with full force forty years previously. One figure in particular was impossible to miss: Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev founded the famous Ballets Russes in 1909 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Having successfully staged Russian
concerts in Paris from as early as 1907, Diaghilev began presenting evenings devoted to dance – a rarity in France at the time. With Diaghilev, ballet became a form of Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total artwork’) combining dance, music and set design. “When I produce a ballet, I do not lose sight of any of these three factors for a moment,” Diaghilev once said. Music was no longer subordinate to dance, and the set was no longer a mere means of illustration. No single art form took precedence over another. Painters – such as Léon Baskt and Alexandre Benois – and musicians were actively involved in the production of these ballets. Diaghilev turned to the artistic avant-garde to develop bold new musical pieces and sets. From that point on, he worked alongside Pablo Picasso (costumes and set design) on the ballets Parade
(1917), Tricorne (1917) and Pulcinella (1920) – set to music by Erik Satie, Manuel de Falla and Igor Stravinsky. respectively –, Marie Laurencin (costumes and set design) on the ballet Les Biches (1923) set to music by Francis Poulenc, and Georges Rouault (set design) on the ballet Prodigal Son (1929) set to music by Sergei Prokofiev. Set to daring music by Igor Stravinsky (such as The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring) and groundbreaking choreography by Léonide Masside, Vaslav Nijinsky & Bronislava Nijinska, and George Balanchine, Diaghilev’s Russian ballets were synonymous with modernity. The death of Diaghilev in 1929 marked a turning point in the history of dance, but the energy he brought to the cause lived on.

(1) Jean Miotte, L’Élan dans le défi, Saint-Julien-Molin-Molette: Les Sept Collines – Jean-Pierre Huguet Éditeur, 2001, p.27.

(2) During his military service, Jean Miotte began painting barrack walls and theatre sets. The artist recalled: “Military activities not being my forte, I found a way of avoiding them by decorating break rooms with Pop Art creations, which I made before the movement officially came into existence. [I’d paint] beautiful girls on beaches to entertain the soldiers, as well as sets for the great classics of barracks theatre.” Ibid. p.21.
(3) “I’ve only got three months left to live […]” confided Jean Miotte; ibid. p.23.
(4) Renée Jeanmaire (1924-2020), known as Zizi Jeanmaire, was a French ballet dancer, music hall dancer and singer. She trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School, where she met Roland Petit, with whom she redefined the concept of dance – freed from the confines of ballet, dance was democratised. Zizi Jeanmaire danced with the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo, the Ballets des Champs-Élysées, the Ballets Russes de Colonel W. de Basil and the Ballets de Paris. She became Prima Ballerina at the latter, which was established by Roland Petit. She also performed on Broadway and in Hollywood, where she began working in musicals. Married to Roland Petit, she became his muse, inspiring choreographic works such as Carmen – which was created in 1949 – in which she adopted an androgynous style and her famous boyish hairstyle.
(5) Wladimir Skouratoff was a Franco-Russian dancer. A key figure in the Marquis de Cuevas’ ballet company, he also worked with Serge Lifar and Roland Petit, among others. He danced with Zizi Jeanmaire in Aubade (1946) and with Rosella Hightower in Piège de lumière (1952). As a choreographer, he was appointed Ballet Master at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux from 1970 to 1990.
(6) Jean Miotte, L’Élan dans le défi, Saint-Julien-Molin-Molette: Les Sept Collines – Jean-Pierre Huguet Éditeur, 2001, p.27.

In the early 1930s, the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, a ballet company founded by Colonel Wassily de Basil and René Blum, continued the work of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes by staging works by Léonide Massine and George Balanchine. The company subsequently split up, leading to the formation of the Ballets Russes de Colonel W. de Basil – which was based in Covent Garden in London and took over most of Diaghilev’s repertoire – and the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo.

Several years later, the Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo and, subsequently, the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas proved equally synonymous with modernity in Monte Carlo. Established in 1951 and disbanded in 1962, the latter was the first company of predominantly American dancers in Europe. With financial support from his wife Margaret Rockefeller Strong, the Marquis de Cuevas (7) earned his company a prestigious reputation by working with the greatest dancers, including Rosella Hightower, Wladimir Skouratoff, Ethéry Pagava and Rudolf Nureyev.

Jean Miotte forged close ties with the Marquis de Cuevas’ ballet company. He became friends with the famous Rosella Hightower (8) who even asked him to design sets for her choreographic works. Miotte worked on these projects with great enthusiasm. The artist explained: “One day, Rosella Hightower, a dancer with the Marquis de Cuevas’ ballet company, asked me to design sets for the routines she was to perform. Her proposition appealed to me, especially as my work was to be exhibited at the Théâtre de l’Empire (9) for the première of the troupe’s show. My Greek friend Byzantios and I were working non-stop from morning to noon, evening and night. We only had a few days to finish it, so we had to work fast.” (10) In Paris, several theatres besides the Paris Opera offered dance productions as part of their programmes. Until the 1960s, however, it was rare to see a ballet performed in its entirety. “Composite evenings” (11), in which various ballet sequences were performed, were staged instead. They required a large number of sets. In another publication, Jean Miotte recounted his experience with the Marquis de Cuevas’ ballet company: “When the troupe became the Marquis de Cuevas’ company, Rosella brought me to Monte Carlo as a set designer. I loved that existence, in which seriousness and concentration were followed by big, joyous, burlesque parties.” (12)

(7) Jorge Cuevas Bartholin, better known as the Marquis de Cuevas (1885-1961), was a Chilean-born American patron of the arts with a passion for dance. In New York, he founded a dance school and then a dance company, Ballet International, in 1943. The Marquis de Cuevas then moved to France, where he bought the Nouveau Ballet de Monte-Carlo in 1947, merging it with his own company, which became the Grand Ballet de Monte-Carlo. The latter was renamed the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas in 1951, and finally the International Ballet of the Marquis de Cuevas in 1958. An extravagant and fashionable character, the Marquis de Cuevas surrounded himself with outstanding dancers who earned his ballet company its reputation. Such dancers included Rosella Hightower, Wladimir Skouratoff, the couple George Skibine & Marjorie Tallchief, André Eglevsky, Serge Golovine, Ethéry Pagava and Rudolf Nureyev, among others. The Marquis de Cuevas’ ballet company performed all over the world. Its artistic repertoire incorporated both new works, such as Piège de lumière, choreographed by John Taras (1952), and classical ballets, such as The Sleeping Beauty, which was presented in its entirety in 1961. After the death of the Marquis de Cuevas in 1961, the ballet company briefly changed its name to the International Ballet of the Marquise de Cuevas, but due to financial difficulties, it was disbanded the following year.

(8) Rosella Hightower (1920-2008) was a Franco-American dancer and dance teacher. Of Native American heritage, she made her mark with her technical prowess and her appearance. After training at the Marquis de Cuevas Ballet School, she became a central figure at the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas. After the company disbanded, she founded the multidisciplinary Centre de Danse International Rosella Hightower in Cannes, which later became the Pôle National Supérieur de Danse Rosella Hightower.
(9) The Théâtre de l’Empire was a Parisian theatre that was particularly fashionable during the Roaring Twenties and the post-war years. Located at 41 Avenue de Wagram, it offered an eclectic programme including music hall, theatre, ballet, circus, cinema and even a television studio. It was a regular venue for ballet performances by the Marquis de Cuevas’ ballet company, along with the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt. The theatre was destroyed by fire in 2005.
(10) Jean Miotte, L’Élan dans le défi, Saint-Julien-Molin-Molette: Les Sept Collines – Jean-Pierre Huguet Éditeur, 2001, p.28.
(11) In his biography Le Marquis de Cuevas, Gérard Mannoni wrote: “We are used to seeing the great classical ballets in their entirety. This was not the case in France in the early 1960s. The première of Snow White, a major ballet in several acts by Serge Lira and Maurice Yvain, at the Opera in 1951 was a unique event. Apart from Sylvia, no great ballet in three or four acts from the late 19th century had been performed in its entirety. Instead, there was a preference for composite evenings such as Wednesdays at the Paris Opéra, or those presented by touring companies such as those run by Roland Petit or Maurice Béjart. The complete version of Swan Lake, which was staged at the Opera with choreography by Bourmeister in 1961, was a major first… With Josette Amiel and Peter Van Eyck in the lead roles, the production opened up a completely new path for the Opera.” From Gérard Mannoni’s Le marquis de Cuevas, Paris: JC Lattès, 2003, p.170.
(12) Jean Miotte in Jean-Clarence Lambert and Jean Miotte, Visite à Jean Miotte, Paris: Caractères, 2002, p.17.

Miotte would go on to work on other sets presented at the Melbourne Opera. The artist explained: “This experience would not be a unique one. Indeed, a little later, I would design the sets for a dance piece by Vassikowski inspired by a comedy by Molière, which was performed at the Melbourne Opera.” (13)

In this sense, the artist also embraced the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, which tended towards a synthesis of artistic disciplines, an immersive experience that appealed to all the senses through an all-encompassing project aimed at merging art and life. Born out of German Romanticism and defined by Richard Wagner (14), the seminal concept of Gesamtkunstwerk was embraced by the Bauhaus (15) in Germany and then by Black Mountain College (16) in North Carolina, where what may have been the first happening took place in 1952 (17). In a single performance event, theatre, music, dance and the visual arts were deployed simultaneously. For Jean Miotte, dance was not simply synonymous with movement; it was also a way of exploring abstraction. He maintained: “I savoured the first wonders and discoveries of the choreographic world, the arabesques, the theatrical organisation of lines, of rhythm…” (18) Following in the footsteps of Edgar Degas, Jean Miotte sketched dancers as a pretext for the portrayal of movement. But in 1950, as he was coming into closer contact with the world of dance, he painted his first abstract canvas. The figure faded, making way for the arabesque. The composition was organised in a tangle of superimposed layers of paint, punctuated by the strokes of the brush. Michel Seuphor described his work as “…Highly coloured compositions with a well-articulated design that holds the wall…” (19).

In the early 1950s, Jean Miotte met Jean Arp and Gino Severini in Meudon, where he had a studio, and they became friends. With Arp, he discovered the language of abstract art: “For me,” said Miotte, “form and signs have a particular importance.” (20) Miotte and Severini shared a passion for dance and the importance of movement, a key concept for this iconic figure in the futurist movement.

Jean Miotte gradually turned to a form of painting that was fully gestural, free and spontaneous. As if engaged in combat with the paint, the artist moved across the canvas, creating a work that appears to have been painted in one breath. The artist was driven by “something sacred in the energy of living.” (21) As Karl Ruhrberg recalled, “Anyone who has had the opportunity to observe the painter at work – in person or on film – with his leaps, his ardour and his bursts of energy, is immediately able to draw a connection between the coordination

of his movements and the gestures, as dynamic as they are precise, of his painting.” (22) Jean- Clarence Lambert added, “There is something dance-like in his paintings that may be defined as an inspired use of the body’s energy.” (23)

(13) Jean Miotte, L’Élan dans le défi, Saint-Julien-Molin-Molette: Les Sept Collines – Jean-Pierre Huguet Éditeur, 2001, p.28.

(14) The concept of a Gesamtkunstwerk stems from German Romanticism. In his essay Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (‘The Artwork of the Future’), Richard Wagner defined a Gesamtkunstwerk, or ‘total artwork’, as a new vision of opera as an allencompassing form of performance, combining music, song, dance, theatre, poetry and the visual arts.

(15) The Bauhaus was a German school of architecture and applied arts founded by Walter Gropius and located successively in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin between 1919 and 1933. It was a vital artistic incubator for avant-garde developments in architecture, the applied arts and the performing arts. The Bauhaus laid the foundations for modern architecture, design and performance art. Denounced by the Nazis for its “degenerate art”, the school closed in 1933. Many artists and teachers fled to the United States.

(16) Black Mountain College was an experimental, multidisciplinary liberal arts college founded in 1933 near Asheville, North Carolina. With the arrival of the couple Josef & Anni Albers, it became a centre for the transmission of Bauhaus teaching. It was also a hotbed of artistic experimentation. The college closed its doors in 1957.

(17) The first happening in the history of art probably took place at the Black Mountain College’s summer institute in 1952. An experimental event lasting 45 minutes saw a whole range of artistic and theatrical activities deployed and performed simultaneously. David Tudor played the piano, M.C. Richards and Charles Olson read poetry, Robert Rauschenberg projected films onto the ceiling and played music, John Cage read a lecture and Merce Cunningham danced, while a dog ran barking through the audience, surrounded by white monochromatic works by Robert Rauschenberg and an abstract painting by Franz Kline.

(18) Jean Miotte in Chester Himes, Miotte, Palaiseau: SMI (L’art se raconte), 1977, p.32.

(19) Michel Seuphor, Dictionnaire de la peinture abstraite, Paris: Hazan, 1957.

(20) Jean Miotte, L’Élan dans le défi, Saint-Julien-Molin-Molette: Les Sept Collines – Jean-Pierre Huguet Éditeur, 2001, p.34.

(21) “Jean Miotte” by Francis Spar, Connaissance des Arts, No. 41, November 1963.

(22) Karl Ruhrberg, Miotte, Paris: La Différence, 1998, p.15.

(23) Marcelin Pleynet, Jean Miotte, Paris: Cercle d’Art, Grands créateurs contemporains, 1993.

For Jean Miotte, the role of gesture was of paramount importance. It was indeed the cornerstone of all his artistic constructions. In a conversation with his friend Jean-Clarence Lambert, the artist evoked Paul Klee: “A rhythm can be seen and heard, and felt in your muscles.” Miotte even added: “This recognition of the body, of gesture, is one of the keys to modernity in art.” (24) Gesture reigns supreme in his canvases. The background is sometimes left white or raw, like a breath, while colour punctuates the rhythm, like a sounding board.

When the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris bought its first canvas from the artist in 1953 and Parisian galleries began exhibiting him, his work was quickly exported abroad. To Europe, of course, and also the United States. In 1961, Miotte won a grant from the Ford Foundation to visit the United States, where he spent six months, travelling the length and breadth of the country. In New York, he immersed himself in the energy of the city, where he met the artists Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko and Alexander Calder. He appreciated the force of works by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, pioneers of Abstract Expressionism (25) , although he himself sought a more personal, indeed more intimate form of expression in his work. “There is no imitation, no reproduction,” stressed Castor Seibel,
“but the inner event itself finds expression in the colours and gestural dynamic of his script, which has a different potential from what has been described in traditional painting as composition and structure… Miotte’s paintings are a place where contrasts coexist, where they are no longer expressed in a dualistic sense. Happiness dwells alongside chaos, while tenderness does not exclude impetuousness, nor do clashes exclude joy… In this sense, Jean Miotte is an important creator of new forms.” (26)

In Asia, the artist enjoyed an undisputed reputation. In 1980, he became the first Western artist to be invited to exhibit in China – in Beijing – after the end of Mao Zedong’s regime. Numerous institutional exhibitions followed in the Asia-Pacific region, including those in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines. Asian audiences appreciated his free, gestural pictorial script, which resembled calligraphy. His work enjoyed great success.

(24) Jean Miotte in Jean-Clarence Lambert and Jean Miotte, Visite à Jean Miotte, Paris: Caractères, 2002, p.18.

(25) Abstract Expressionism is an American artistic movement that developed primarily in New York, where it emerged after the Second World War. It encompasses Action painting and Color Field painting, which revolutionised the way painting was approached – with the canvas on the ground, in the “all-over” style that ceased to be bound by the limits of the support – while at the same time following in the footsteps of other avant-garde artistic movements, such as Surrealism, with its
automatic writing and use of drip painting. Abstract Expressionism directly echoed the gestural and lyrical style of painting that was developing in Europe at the same time.

(26) Castor Seibel in José-Augusto França and Castor Seibel, Miotte, Geneva: La Porte Verte, 1975.

“Miotte’s art has been considered close to the Abstract Expressionists, and he certainly is abstract. However, one must stress his independence, his expressive power and his joie de vivre. A few critics have rightly associated him with choreography, the movement of dance and ballet but I would also like to remark upon his affinity with Chinese calligraphy, in the sense that his aim and his philosophy is not to reproduce nature, but to capture movement, existence and life in all its different guises. If a few artists attain this in part, Miotte’s work opens wide the space for reflection. In his work, spontaneity coexists with passion and discipline…” (27) wrote Hian Tan Swie at the time of the Jean Miotte retrospective at the National Museum of Singapore in 1983.

In 1994, over a decade later, Jean Miotte’s spectacular five-metre work Sud [South] entered the Paris Opera collection. The move was much more than a symbolic gesture. To this day, even after the artist’s death in 2016, the painting exhibited in the lobby of the Opéra Bastille in Paris continues to bear witness to the living connection between Jean Miotte and dance, between his pictorial energy and movement. His work was described by Jean-Clarence Lambert as a form of “choreographic abstraction” (28), an expression that rings truer today than ever before.

(27) Jean Miotte, L’Élan dans le défi, Saint-Julien-Molin-Molette: Les Sept Collines – Jean-Pierre Huguet Éditeur, 2001, p.161.
(28) Jean-Clarence Lambert in Jean-Clarence Lambert and Jean Miotte, Visite à Jean Miotte, Paris: Caractères, 2002, p.18.

Exhibited artworks

Costumes & Set-design projects

THE YEARS OF STUDIES OF THE PAINTER JEAN MIOTTE

Jean Miotte was born in Paris on September 8th, 1926 and spent his youth in Occupied Paris: he was eighteen years old at the end of the war. “It was in this context of upheaval and planetary ideological turmoil that his desire for other values, other spiritual commitments was exacerbated. His hostility towards all forms of regimentation, group effects, dates from this time. At the age of nineteen, he had decided, his path would be solitary” wrote Serge Lenczner.
After studying mathematics, Jean Miotte completed his military service. The artist explained: “I was struck by the ugliness of the facilities and the wall decorations in the surrounding area, and I swore to myself from the moment I saw them that I would transform them.” As such, he began painting the walls in the break rooms – “With Pop Art before its time” noted Miotte, and “Beautiful girls on beaches to entertain the soldiers…” – as well as sets for the barracks theatre.
Stricken with tuberculosis, Miotte’s military service was cut short and he was hospitalised for several months, during which time he practised painting and drawing. Once he had recovered, he continued his artistic endeavours in Paris – which was brimming with activity – and attended a number of free art schools in Montparnasse, such as the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the studios of Othon Friesz and Ossip Zadkine, among others. At this time, Miotte painted
nude models as well as imaginary compositions. He was very interested in Jacques Villon, Georges Rouault and Henri Matisse.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DANCE TO JEAN MIOTTE ’S ART

In 1948, Miotte followed his Russian friends to London where the Ballets Russes de Colonel W. de Basil were performing. It was with great joy that he discovered the world of dance. The artist explained: “I savoured the first wonders and discoveries of the choreographic world, the arabesques, the theatrical organisation of lines, of rhythm…” Miotte became friends with some of the key figures in dance, including the dancers Zizi Jeanmaire, Wladimir Skouratoff and Rosella Hightower, who even asked him to design sets for her choreographic works. Miotte thus became involved with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas – whose members included Rosella Hightower and Wladimir Skouratoff – which was based in Monte Carlo. Towards the end of the 1940s, Miotte often depicted dancers in his work. After that, Miotte’s painting became non-figurative, drawing on dramatic play and performance. Movement became fundamental to his work. Jean-Clarence Lambert described his work as a form of “choreographic abstraction”. Miotte wanted to achieve a fusion of the visual and performing arts. “I have a passion for dance and choreography…” he confided, “I dream of a magnificent synthesis of painting, music and choreography.” Throughout his career, Jean Miotte created a number of stage sets and costumes. In 1994, his spectacular five-metre canvas Sud (South) entered the collection of the Opéra Bastille, where it is on display today.

JEAN MIOTTE ’S EARLY SUCCESSES

Jean Miotte travelled to Italy and discovered Quattrocento art. He also met the artists Piero Dorazio, Lorenzo Guerrini and Achille Perilli. On returning to Paris, Jean Miotte was influenced by the paintings of Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger.

Miotte painted his first abstract painting in 1950. He was living and working in Meudon, where he made friends with the artists Jean Arp and Gino Severini – two key figures, one in the world of abstract art, the other in terms of the importance of movement. Jean Miotte also developed a close relationship with Sam Francis, whom he met in 1952 and visited in his studio in Ville-d’Avray. In 1953, Jean Cassou bought a painting by Jean Miotte for the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. In the same year, Miotte had his first exhibition at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, an event in which he would participate regularly from then on. The same year, the art critic Michel Seuphor contacted him for his publication Dictionnaire de l’art abstrait which was published in 1957. Miotte’s painting is described in it as: “highly coloured compositions with clearly articulated design that have wall power.” Jean Miotte is a personal work, between Lyrical Abstraction, Informal Art and Tachisme. “The names of the artists who, with their lyricism, are an exception to the general rule of coldness… Jean Miotte, by whom bright and airy painting transmits an undeniable emotion,” wrote the art critic Alain Jouffroy. Jean Miotte’s paintings were created with an immediate gesture, a dazzling energy. “Movement is my life” he recalled. In this, he can be compared to Jackson Pollock.

Jean Miotte never prepared his work with sketches. This differentiated him from Hans Hartung for example. The American art critic Harold Rosenberg appreciated this practice especially: “the most important thing in art is freshness”.
This free and instinctive form of painting was also influenced by Surrealism. The spirit was liberated of all constraints of reflection: “it is the intuition that counts above all when a work is born”. Jean Miotte evoked his work as the “result of internal conflicts, my painting is a projection; a succession of acute moments where creation happens in full spiritual tension. Painting is not a speculation of the mind or the intellect, it is a gesture that is carried within.” Jean Miotte met Roberto Matta who told him: “Surrealism is for me a battle. (…) You, too, you’re a fighter, you’re like me, your paintings aren’t abstract.”
The influence of Cubism is also present. Just as his predecessors decomposed to recompose, Miotte “unmakes”. According to Karl Ruhrberg, with Jean Miotte, it is “the orchestration of a world that explodes”. He also underlined Jean Miotte’s strong connection to his northern origins, especially Frans Hals, “who, like him allied spontaneous painting and harmony between impulse and balance.”

In 1954, Jean Miotte moved his studio to the townhouse of the sculptor Prince Youriévitch in Boulogne, where the artists Jacques Lanzman and Serge Rezvani were also living. The following year, the painter Henri Goetz brought his pupils to visit this studio.
In 1957, Jean Miotte participated in the exhibition 50 Ans d’Art Abstrait at the Galerie Creuse in Paris. A solo exhibition of his work was held at the Galerie Lucien Durand in the same city. From 1958, Jean Miotte was represented in Europe by the dealer Jacques Dubourg. That year, Jean Miotte met the painters André Lanskoy, Serge Poliakoff and Pierre Dmitrienko.

Jean Miotte became successful in Germany where ten exhibitions were devoted to his work during the 1950s, for example at the Kunsthalle of Recklinghausen in 1958. He was also included in a group exhibition of fifteen painters at the Cologne Kunstverein. In 1960, the Ludwig Museum of Cologne acquired a work by Jean Miotte.

THE PAINTER JEAN MIOTTE ’S FIRST TRIP TO THE USA

Jean Miotte exhibited at the first Paris Biennale in 1959 in the “Section Informels” with Raymond Hains, LeRoy Neiman, Peter Foldes and André Favory. The following year, two paintings by Jean Miotte were included in the inaugural exhibition of the Galerie Karl Flinker in Paris. Paintings by him were also included in the inaugural exhibition of the Galerie Iris Clert. In 1961, Jean Miotte participated with Sam Francis, Georges Mathieu and Jean-Paul Riopelle in the group exhibitions of the Swenska-Franska Gallery in Stockholm and the Galerie Bonnier in Lausanne. That year, he was awarded the Ford Foundation Prize and was invited to spend six months in the USA. The following year, a solo show of his work was organized by the Iolas Gallery in New York. Jean Miotte met the American artists Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Chaïm Jacob Lipchitz and Alexander Calder. He travelled around the USA and gave a lecture at Colorado Spring University.

INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION FOR THE PAINTER JEAN MIOTTE

In 1963, a Jean Miotte retrospective was organized by the Stedelijk Museum of Schiedam and it then transferred to the Groningen Museum in the Netherlands. Jean Miotte participated the same year in the group exhibition Art Contemporain at the Grand Palais in Paris. In February 1964, the Portuguese art historian José-Augusto França wrote about Jean Miotte’s painting in the magazine Costruire: “A gestural painter in the French spirit, Miotte expresses himself in the constructive despite the impression of immediate vehemence that emanates from his paintings: his art goes beyond the post-war aesthetic, standing out in a more modern way by a conscience of the independence of the idea of creating.”
During the 1960s, many exhibitions of Jean Miotte’s work were organized in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and in Belgium. At that time, he worked in the south of France, at Pignans. In 1967, he was again included in an exhibition at the Schiedam Stedelijk Museum, the group show Huit peintres de Paris, along with Chafik Abboud, Olivier Debré, Karskaya, Jean Messagier, Carl Moser, Louis Nalard and Paul Rebeyrolle.

In 1970, Jean Miotte became a member of the Comité des Réalités Nouvelles. He exhibited forty paintings at the Fondation Prouvost at Marcq-en-Baroeul. In 1971, Jean Miotte started using hessian bare canvas as an element in his compositions. The following year, he again spent time in the USA, this time in New York and Washington. Forty-six of his canvases were exhibited at the International Monetary Fund in Washington. Jean Miotte moved his studio to Hamburg in Germany.
In 1975, a monograph on Jean Miotte was published, containing a text by the dealer Castor Seibel: “no imitation, no reproduction, but the internal event finds its expression in the colours and a gestural dynamic… Miotte’s painting is a place where the contradictions of our age are no longer expressed in a dualist way… In this sense, J.M. is an important creator of new forms.”

The following year, Jean Miotte experimented with paper as a support and made eighty gouaches as well as collages of brown paper and newspaper. One of his works was acquired by the Museum of Maassluis in the Netherlands. He exhibited in Padua alongside Enrico Baj, Alexander Calder and Karel Appel. Jean Miotte moved his studio to Vitry-sur-Seine. He exhibited at the Malines cultural centre in Belgium at the group show Kunst in Europa 1920-1960 which brought together the big names in contemporary art of the time.

In 1978, Jean Miotte was invited to speak in the context of exhibitions of his work at the French cultural centre in Damascus and then at the museum of Alep in Syria and finally in Amman in Jordan. The same year, he moved his studio to New York where he was represented by the Martha Jackson Gallery.
His work was shown at exhibitions about French painting from the 1950s at the Maison de la culture de Grenoble, at the Musée de Dunkerque and at the Musée de Saint-Omer in France.

JEAN MIOTTE ’S TRAVELS IN ASIA

In May 1980, Jean Miotte exhibited fifty works in Beijing at the French cultural centre. He was the first western painter to be invited to exhibit his work in Beijing after Mao’s death. Jean Miotte took this opportunity to travel around China. In 1982, he exhibited sixty paintings at the Hong Kong Art Center and then at the French-Japanese Institute of Tokyo. The following year, Jean Miotte exhibited at the Singapore National Museum and at the National Museum of History of Taipei. In 1984, he was exhibited at the Striped House Museum of Tokyo.

The Guggenheim Museum acquired two works on paper by Jean Miotte in 1987. In 1991, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris exhibited the prints commissioned by Danielle Mitterrand for her album Mémoire de la liberté. Fifty-five artists were involved in this project including Jean Miotte, Roy Lichtenstein, Antoni Tapies, Sam Francis and Robert Rauschenberg. The following year, a Jean Miotte retrospective was organized at the Palais des Arts de Toulouse.

The Jean Miotte Foundation was opened in New York in 2002 with a permanent collection of his
works. It is nowadays based in Fribourg (Switzerland). Jean Miotte died on March 1st, 2016 at the age of 89.

© Diane de Polignac Gallery / Mathilde Gubanski
Translation: Jane Mac Avock

SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Berlin, Graphotek
Castellon, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Villafamés
Cologne, Museum Ludwig
Dortmund, Museum am Ostwall
Dhaka, National Museum of Bangladesh
Dunkirk (France), Musée d’Art Contemporain
Hamburg, Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek
Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky
Maassluis (Netherlands), Gemeentemuseum
Munich, Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst
New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
New York, The Museum of Modern Art
New York, The Chelsea Art Museum
Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale
Paris, Ministère des Affaires culturelles
Paris, Opéra national Bastille
Paris – La Défense, Fonds national d’art contemporain (FNAC)
Paris – La Défense, Fondation d’Art contemporain CNIT
Rio de Janeiro, Museo de Arte moderna
Saarbrucken (Germany), Saarlandmuseum, Moderne Galerie
Singapore, National Museum of Singapore
Taichung, Taiwan Museum of Arts

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris, 1953. Participated regularly from this date on
Exposition d’ouverture, Galerie du Haut du Pavé, Paris, 1954
50 ans d’art abstrait, to coincide with the publication of the Dictionnaire de la Peinture abstraite by Michel Seuphor, Galerie Creuse, Paris, 1957
Galerie Lucien Durand, Paris, 1957
Réalités nouvelles, nouvelles réalités, 13e salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Kunsthalle de Recklinghausen, Recklinghausen (Germany), 1958
Five Painters from Paris: Bogart, Bysantios, Jousselin, Miotte, Mihailovitch, Attico Gallery, Rome, 1958
Section Informel : Hains, Miotte, Neiman, Foldes, Favory…, First Paris Biennale, Paris, 1959
15 Painters from Paris, Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, 1959, 1962
Ouverture, Galerie Flinker, Paris, 1960
Ouverture, Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, 1960
Am Dom Gallery, Francfort, 1960
Gunar Gallery, Dusseldorf, 1960
International Exhibition, Museum Wolfram Von Eschenbach, Wolframs-Eschenbach (Germany), 1961
Sam Francis, Mathieu, Miotte, Riopelle, Swenska Franska Gallery, Stockholm, 1961
Galerie Bonnier, Lausanne, 1961
Drian Gallery, London, 1961
Centre Culturel de Mechelen, Mechelen (Belgium), 1961, 1976
Iolas Gallery, New York, 1962
Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris, 1963
Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam (Netherlands), 1963, 1967
Groningen Museum, Groningen (Netherlands), 1963
Galerie Zodiaque, Brussels, 1963
Grand Palais, Paris, 1963, 1988
Cobra and the Informal: Appel, Constant, Corneille, Miotte, Riopelle, Tal Coat, Krikhaar Gallery, Amsterdam, 1965
Dierks Gallery, Aarhus (Denmark), 1966, 1968, 1971
Court Gallery, Copenhagen, 1966
Bio Gallery, Aalborg (Denmark), 1967
International graphies, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1970
Wünsche Gallery, Bonn, 1970, 1974, 1976
Septentrion, Centre artistique de la Fondation A. Prouvost, Marcq-en-Baroeul (France), 1970
Huit Peintres de Paris : Abboud, Debré, Karskaya, Messagier, Moser, Miotte, Nalard, Rebeyrolle, Maison de la Culture, Bourges, 1971
International Monetary Fund, Washington DC, 1972
Dinastia Gallery, Lisbon, 1972
Prudhoe Gallery, London, 1973, 1974
Winter Gallery, Braunschweig (Germany), 1975, 1978
Nieuwe Weg Gallery, Doorn (Netherlands), 1976, 1979, 1984, 1991
Five artists: Appel, Baj, Calder, Miotte, Scordia, Alfiere Gallery, Padua, 1976
Bishops Gallery, Melbourne, 1977
Damascus Cultural Center, Damascus, 1978
National Museum, Alep, 1978
Amman Cultural Center, Amman, 1978
Musée de Dunkerque, Dunkirk, 1978, 1993
L’Abstraction des Années 50 en France, Maison de la Culture, Grenoble, 1978
L’Abstraction des années 50 en France, Musée de Saint-Omer, 1978
Travelling retrospective in French cultural centres, 1979

Beijing Cultural Center, Beijing: First exhibition of a western artist in the People’s Republic of China, 1980
Galería Lucas, Gandía (Spain), 1980, 1981
Koppelmann Gallery, Leverkusen (Germany), 1980, 1983
Centre Culturel, Montpellier (France), 1980
Ayala Museum, Manilla, 1981
Postmuseum, Hamburg, 1981
Evergreen Galleries, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington D.C, 1982
Hong-Kong Arts Center, Hong-Kong, 1982
French-Japanese Institute of Tokyo, Tokyo, 1982
Trevisan Galleries, Edmonton (Canada), 1982
Paris 59: Fautrier, Feraud, Hartung, Lanskoy, Lipsi, Miotte, Schneider, Sonderborg, Soulages, TaI Coat, Tapies, Koppelmann Gallery, Cologne, 1982
National Museum of Singapore, Singapore, 1983
National Museum of History, Taipei, 1983
Bitran, Chu teh-Chun, Hartung, Miotte, Soulages, Chapelle des Franciscains, Saint-Nazaire (France), 1983
Galerie La Cité, Luxembourg, 1983, 1987
Striped House Museum, Tokyo, 1984
Vik Gallery, Edmonton (Canada), 1984
Institut Français d’Athènes, Athens, 1984
Deux peintres, deux sculpteurs, Orangerie de Bagatelle, Paris, 1984
Opus Gallery, Miami, 1985
Konstmassan, Stockholm, 1985, 1989
Art Atrium, Stockholm, 1985
Columbia University, New York, 1986
Keeser Gallery, Hamburg, 1987, 1989, 1991
Les Peintres autour d’Arrabal, Musée d’Histoire, Eschsur-Alzette, Luxembourg, 1987
Ciae, Chicago International Art Exhibition, Chicago, 1987
Euro-Arab Colloquium, National Museum of Malta, Malta, 1987
Art in Paris, Pavilion Inter-continental Singapore, Singapore, 1987
Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery, New York, 1988
Egelund Gallery, Copenhague-Holte, 1988, 1990
Espace d’Art Contemporain E. Ungaro, La Rochelle (France), 1988
Rencontres écrites, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, 1988
Les années 50 : Benrath, Chu teh-Chun, Debré, Dietrich Mohr, Féraud, Hartung, Lanskoy, Miotte, Music, Père, Pichette, de Staël, Subira Puig, Casino de Hyères, Hyères (France), 1988
Les années 50, Mécénat Pernod, Créteil, First venue of a travelling exhibition, 1988
N’namdi Gallery, Detroit, 1989
Miotte/Arrabal, Maler und Dichter, Institut Français de Hambourg, Hamburg, 1989
Von Braunbehrens Gallery, Munich, 1990, 1992, 1996
Wild Gallery, Frankfurt, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1997
Abstrakte Malerei nach 1945: Miotte, Noël, Schumacher, Sonderborg, Thieler, Haus Sandreuther, Riehen-Basel (Switzerland), 1990
Art et Partage, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nice, 1990
Seibu Museum, Tokyo, 1991
Galerie Jade, Colmar (France), 1991, 1992
Michael Schultz Gallery, Berlin, 1991, 1993, 1997
Mémoire de la Liberté : 55 artists from 23 countries, César, Sam Francis, Miotte, Rauschenberg, Motherwell, Lichtenstein, Tinguely, Tapies, etc., illustrate each article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, organized by the Association France Liberté, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1991
Collections des collections – De Paul Klee à nos jours, CNIT, Fondation d’Art Contemporain, Paris-La Défense, 1991
Couleurs de la vie, international travelling exhibition of contemporary art under the patronage of Mrs. Danielle Mitterand, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1991
Forms of Abstraction, N’namdi Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan, 1991
Palais des Arts, Toulouse (France), 1992
Shuyu Gallery, Tokyo, 1992
Saint-Polly Gallery, Gunrua (Japan), 1992
Art and Art, Nicaf 92, Yokohama, 1992
Large formats, Miami Art Fair, Miami, 1992
Multiple Art, Düsseldorf, 1992, 1994
5 artistes des années 50 : Christophorou, Debré, Miotte, Féraud, Koch, Centre Culturel Jean Despas, Saint-Tropez (France), 1993
Hartung and Miotte, Ishi Gallery, Osaka, 1993
Musée des Cordeliers, Châteauroux (France), 1994
Œuvres graphiques, Musée Bertrand, Châteauroux (France), 1994
30 Years Later: Sam Francis, Jean Miotte, Joan Mitchell, Jean-Paul Riopelle, organized by Chapel Art Center, Hamburg and Cologne, 1994, 1995, 1997
For peace and reconstruction in Lebanon – 33 Painters, Sursock Museum, Beirut, 1994
Chinesische Kunst nach 1945 in Europa – Eine Gegenüberstellung: Li Di, Chu teh-Chun, Zao, Rétrospective 1956-1996, Mücsarnok Museum, Budapest, 1996

Les années 1945-1975, Maison de l’Unesco, Paris, 1996
Arrabal, der Lyriker und die Künstler, Dali, Dorny, Miotte, Saura, Gutenberg Museum, Mainz (Germany), 1996
The Garner Tullis Donation, The Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC, 1996
Museum Am Ostwall, Dortmund, 1997, 1999, 2000
Ont-ils du métier ? Propositions pour l’art vivant – Agam, Boltansky, César, Claisse, Cruz. Diez, Hains, Honegger, Messager, Miotte, Morellet, Nemours, Soto, Tinguely, Vasarely, Venet…, Galerie Denise René, Paris, 1997
Grenzganger (who cross the border): Sandro Chia, lan Hamilton Finlay, Markus Lüppertz, Jean Miotte, A.R. Penck, Bernd Zimmer, for the 200th anniversary of Heinrich Heine, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Goethe institut Paris and Marseille, Villa Romana, Florence, 1997
20 Years of Exhibition, Museum Haus Ludwig für Kunstausstellungen, Saarlouis (Germany), 1997
Arbeiten auf Papier (works on paper), Kunstmarkt Dresden, Dresden, 1997
The National Arts Club, New York, 1998
Van Der Togt Museum, Amsterdam-Amstelveen, 1998
Villa Haiss, contemporary art Museum, Zell A.H. (Germany), 1998, 2000
Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Fribourg (Switzerland), 1999
Museum Ludwig, Koblenz (Germany), 2000
Aboa Vetus Ars Nova Museum, Turku (Finland), 2000
Museum of Brno (Czech Republic), 2002
Chelsea Art Museum, New York, 2003, 2005
Museo Fundacion Cristóbal Gabarrón, Valladolid (Spain), 2005
Artrium, Geneva, 2005
Bibliothèque nationale de Nice, Nice, 2005
Jean Miotte, Galerie Diane de Polignac, Paris, 2019
Jean Miotte, un geste qu’on porte en soi, Galerie Diane de Polignac, Paris, 2021
Jean Miotte & la danse, une abstraction chorégraphique, Galerie Diane de Polignac, Paris, 2023

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Michel Seuphor, Dictionnaire de la peinture abstraite, Paris: Fernand Hazan, 1957
Sam Francis, Georges Mathieu, Jean Miotte, Charles Maussion, Jean-Paul Riopelle, exhibition cat., Cologne: Kunstverein, 1962
Karskaya, Debré, Abboud et autres, exhibition cat., Bourges: Maison de la Culture de Bourges, 1972
Michel Ragon, Histoire de l’art abstrait, vol. IV, Paris: Maeght, 1975
José-Augusto França, Castor Seibel, Miotte, Paris: La Porte Verte, 1975
Chester Himes, Miotte, Palaiseau: SMI (L’art se raconte), 1977
Jean Miotte (text), Écriture et signes, exhibition cat., Athens: Institut français d’Athènes, 1984
Gérard Xuriguera, Les années 50, Paris: Arted, 1985
Fernando Arrabal, Jean Miotte, Devoirs de vacances, été 85, Paris: Galilée, 1986
Marcelin Pleynet, Miotte, Œuvres sur papier 1950-1965, Paris: Galilée, 1987
Marcelin Pleynet, Miotte, Paris: La Différence, 1987
Coll., Miotte, Paris: La Différence, 1988
Claude Michel Cluny, Miotte, Peintures et Gouaches, Paris: La Différence (L’Autre Musée), 1989
Mustapha Chelbi, L’affiche d’art en Europe, Paris: Van Wilder, 1989
Jean-Luc Chalumeau, Miotte, Paris: Fragment (Passeport), 1990
Michel Bohbot, Miotte, Le Geste majeur, Paris: Navarra, 1991
Mémoire de la liberté, exhibition cat., Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1991
Jean-Clarence Lambert, Le règne imaginal, Paris: Cercle d’Art (Diagonales), 1992
Lydia Harambourg, L’École De Paris, 1945-1965 : Dictionnaire des peintres, Lausanne: Ides et Calendes, 1993
Marcelin Pleynet, Jean Miotte, Paris: Cercle d’Art, Grands créateurs contemporains, 1993
Karl Ruhrberg, Miotte, Paris: La Différence, 1998
Jean Miotte, L’Élan dans le défi, Saint-Julien-Molin-Molette: Les Sept Collines – Jean-Pierre Huguet Éditeur, 2001
Jean Miotte, un geste qu’on porte en soi, exhibition. cat., Paris: Galerie Diane de Polignac, 2021
Jean Miotte & la danse, une abstraction chorégraphique, exhibition. cat., Paris: Galerie Diane de Polignac, 2023

The Diane de Polignac Gallery would like to express its special thanks to the Fondation Jean Miotte, with which
it works closely to promote the work of Jean Miotte. The Diane de Polignac Gallery also extends its heartfelt thanks to Amandine Albisson and the Association Quatre Couleurs for agreeing to take part in this exhibition project bringing together painting and dance.

JEAN MIOTTE & LA DANSE
Une abstraction chorégraphique
Exhibition from October 17 to November 30, 2023
Diane de Polignac Gallery
2 bis, rue de Gribeauval
75007 Paris
www.dianedepolignac.com

Translation: Lucy Johnston
Graphic design: Diane de Polignac Gallery

ISBN: 978-2-9584349-4-6
© Diane de Polignac Gallery, Paris, October 2023
Texts are author’s property

© ADAGP, Paris 2023 for the works of Jean Miotte
Reserved rights

Art Gallery Diane de Polignac » Publications » Catalog Exhibition Jean Miotte et la Danse une Abstraction Chorégraphique 2023