Forty years on – in France too!
JUST NOW the Picasso Museum in Antibes, have dedicated five rooms on one level to the works of the Belgian painter Yves Zurstrassen.
The title of the exhibition 'Playing Painting' reflects the artist and his work. The painter enjoys adding and subtracting the layers of paint so that we no longer know which colour was painted first. It is a kind of collage style that he uses, influenced in many ways by Kurt Schwitters
A self-taught painter, who orginally studied Graphic design he is adept at colour and abstraction. He has developed his own technique of collages and take-offs. He layers different shapes of papers like stencils while painting through them.
"Everyone knows about collage, well for me, it's takeoff. These are paper stencils that I use. I paint or screen print through these paper holes. At the end, I remove them and what is left is what went through the holes, simply," laughs Yves Zurstrassen.
Zurstrassen is obsessive about jazz too, all his jazz records are carefully filed in brown boxes in his massive industrial space studio where he also lives in Belgium. He likes to paint while listening to jazz, and his paintings look rather like how jazz might be in paintings too, with a kind of Jackson Pollock twist.
"When I close the studio door, a whole universe can open up. It is extraordinary, I really have the feeling of going on a trip. Of going into space, and often at night, when I paint on the edge of sleep . I feel like I am flying, flying away, a bit like Native American Indians who mentally went into space by scrutinising the cosmos," Zurstrassen explains.
Out of a thousand works by the Belgian artist, the exhibition curator at Picasso Museum chose 94. He also decided to design the exhibition in sequences.
"There is no real timeline between the first and last rooms. There are ten years of painting roughly speaking. I really designed the exhibition for this museum," explains Jean-Louis Andral, curator of the exhibition and curator of the Picasso Museum.
Check it out - it won't take you 40 years to see it - that's one thing!
TESSA WILLIAMS
"Playing Painting"
Yves Zurstrassen @ Picasso Museum I place Meriejol Antibes 06600.
Until January 7, 2024.
Prices: 8 euros full rate. 6 euros Concession.
