Union Arbresloise
2022 Exhibition
The annual art exhibition of the painting section of the Union Arbresloise was held at the Médiathèque of L'Arbresle, Rhône, France from the 6th to the 24th September.
This year I presented a series of works entitled 'Metamophosis of the Horse'. This series was insipred by Picasso’s 1945 lithograph 'Bull', in which the artist transforms a realist bull into increasingly more abstract representations in search of the most efficient description of the animal.
The first work in this series was 'Three Horses'. It is an abstract description of a group of horses loosely based on cave art using a minimum of line for a maximum of effect. The second work was Solitary Horse II, based on a realist drawing of a horse but with a focus on modeling volume. It was initially composed of a skeleton of lines, in the manner of Picasso’s 1946 work 'Goat'. The skin was added later to enhance the three dimensional quality of the work.
Having explored both ends of the spectrum of abstraction, subsequent works explored the middle ground between realism and abstraction. Wounded Horse is a realist work, but the subject has been transformed by subtle changes of form. Wounded Horse II, inspired by Picasso’s 1937 work 'Large bather with a book', takes a realistic horse as a starting point and progressively transforms it into abstract geometric forms, giving it a sculptural quality.
The last work in the series is a culmination of the lessons learned from the previous works. Geometric Horse began as a line drawing, but the sculptural quality took hold very quickly. The drawing was progressively simplified until only the essential elements need to describe the form and volume remained.
This was the flyer and invitation for the exhibition. I also provided exhibition notes in French.