The exhibition at the Galerie Raymond Creuze in 1950 (2014)

Foreword

Having been unable to find a living art historian who witnessed the Parisian Art scene at the end of that half century firsthand, I had nothing other than to myself examine that distant past—a position with which I am now familiar.

But if you want more details and particulars, you can find them in the excellent monograph by the art historian Serge Lemoine—who wasn’t really a witness, given his young age—which was published by Flammarion in 2011.

The 1950 Exhibition

Raymond Creuze, who had invited me to show at his gallery in 1950, was a very friendly and passionate man. One of the artists he unfailingly championed was Charchoune, an artist I like very much. His gallery was very well located, on the Avenue de Messine, near the Galerie Carré. Kenneth Noland had his first exhibition there, too, one year before I did. It was one of the most active galleries in Paris. I showed 33 of the works I had made the previous year, in 1949. I had given titles to the 33 pieces in the mini invitation catalogue, but I can’t find any trace of them now, even on the backs of the works, so we should forget about them. We also printed a little incomplete poster and I had to finish each copy by hand.

I received 13 press clippings, including one from Italy and another from Finland! The only unpleasant article was from a local newspaper from my region.

It was my first solo show. I had to wait until 1958 for the second at Colette Allendy, and until 1960 to sell my first piece.

My 49 works from 1949

This exhibition, where you could see 33 of my 49 works from 1949, was what brought Kamel (who is never afraid of a risky adventure) and myself to make a catalogue raisonné and to show some of the pieces, knowing that it would lend more weight to the title of my exhibition “FRANCOIS MORELLET, C’EST N’IMPORTE QUOI?” [FRANCOIS MORELLET, DOES IT MAKE ANY SENSE?]

In fact, I had practically forgotten these pieces, despite the importance of the exhibition at Raymond Creuze’s gallery.

The works from 1949 were absolutely different from those made in 1948, which were themselves rather close to those made in 1950.

I was certainly a little ashamed and a little embarrassed afterward—and still am sometimes, even now—by these cocktails that must have corresponded somewhat to who I must have been, at least in the year 1949. But in the end, it’s amusing to “be a little nonsensical.” And then, for me, there is prescription. So I was so proud of disliking, among other things, professors, the Louvre, cathedrals, the artists from the École de Paris, and basically everything that my parents’ generation liked. On the more positive side of things, I did like the cave paintings of Lascaux, which had just been discovered, the Apocalypse Tapestry in Angers, Tribal Art in general, which you could see at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and, more specifically, the Oceanian Tapa cloths and the works by Australian Aborigines, and some of the unidentified African sculptures.

As for what interested me in 20th century Western art, I especially remember Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Jean Dubuffet, and, of course, my two artist friends, François Arnal and Pierre Dmitrienko. We could while away the time seeking out traces of the original model. Sometimes it’s easy—for example, when you find pieces of bone and innards on a animal, the influence surely comes from the Australian Aborigines.

As for the Oceanian Tapa cloths, it’s the impressions of line segments made by a stamp rather similar to the one I thought I invented in 2011.

To this day, I am still surprised by the large number of these works. There is a reason for this that might seem quite paradoxical, which is that 1949 was also the first year that I “returned” to the family business in Cholet (only to leave in 1976!). In 1948, I obtained this degree in Russian that my father cared so much about, and which required me to spend three-quarters of my time in Paris. And I didn’t have a studio in Paris, whereas I did in my house near Cholet. There, I could “paint” every night and on holidays. I must have had a “jones” for painting that I have a hard time imagining now, and which ended abruptly at the same time as the year 1949 did.

Indeed, in 1950, the year of the exhibition, I had returned to a free geometry. Then, at the end of the year, in December, I went to Brazil in preparation to emigrate there, which I didn’t end up doing. And there, at the São Paolo Museum of Art, a big Max Bill exhibition brought me to “take the cloth,” or more precisely, converted me to Concrete Art. Van Doesburg and some others had stipulated in 1930 that in order to have the right to that designation, the work had to be designed before being created, and that its creation had to be precise and neutral in the use of geometrical elements. That is what I did after a few months, and which I have continued to do. Luckily, there was nothing contraindicating humor.