Human nature1967–1976
In praise of madness
1969, 51 x 78½ ins
nitrocellulose on canvas
JEAN-CLARENCE LAMBERT « RETROSPECTIVE CLAUDE BELLEGARDE » MUSÉe d’ART MODERNE, CATALOG PREFACE, Paris 1971 (extract)
What Bellegarde proposes is indeed the establishment of specific relations between the subjective values (because he never ceases to be a painter) and collective or even cosmic values. In the most recent stages of his work, the human natures organize the chromatic discourse by conferring upon it a new unity that, on this occasion, could even be moral.
OLIVIER KAEPPELIN « LES ORGANES ÉLECTRIQUES » REVUE EXIT, PARIS 1973
Claude Bellegarde’s colors are right there in front of us, they draw us in with their materiality. We are blue, yellow; we are sentimental, mad. The town lives on the colors that burst forth at junctions, in people’s cries, in the silence of evening homecomings. It’s not a question of reds or greens, of liking or rejecting.
We are the colors, their rhythm, their throbbing or their coldness. Bellegarde comes in search of them at the deepest level of ourselves, in the recesses of our intimate organs, in their electricity, their propagation. They unfurl, wrap around our bodies, from eyes to erect organs, through broad waves that spark off the quake, or pass by, slow and distant.
Whether facing anguish or pleasure, when man clings to life, when his body overtakes him, the universe, in a stranglehold, opens up to vibrations and colors that engulf it and bring about its metamorphosis.
