Daniel Dezeuze

Through its history, the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris maintains a privileged link with the Supports/Surfaces group, which it first presented under that name at the ARC in 1970. Among its founders, Daniel Dezeuze (born 1942) occupies a decisive place.

The son of the painter Georges Dezeuze (1905-2004), he attended the Beaux-Arts de Montpellier as an informal student, where he met Arnal, Bioulès, Grand, Rouan and Viallat. His stay in Mexico in 1964-65 left a deep mark on his painting, nourished by pre-Hispanic cultures.

In North America he then discovered the New York School, from Pollock to Rothko. Settling in Paris in 1967, he worked out, with Saytour and Viallat, the foundations of Supports/Surfaces, conducting a radical reflection on the future of painting.

This challenge to the traditional structure of the picture led him to concentrate his work on the support itself. He then embarked on a true « deconstruction  » of the canvas considered as an object, asserting the materialism of the works and the primacy of the creative process.

Dezeuze left the group in 1972 and pursued a personal research centred on the construction of the picture, the fragility of materials, economy of means and continuous experimentation.

Twenty recent works now join the collections of the Musée d'Art Moderne, an exceptional acquisition that allows his career to be traced back to 1982.

They bear witness to his taste for reuse (doors, panels, skis), assembly, colour as a generator of form and the importance of the void.

References to art history (Mondrian), the Middle Ages, Mesoamerican cultures and calligraphy run through and nourish the whole of his work of the last forty years.