Typograms1963–1967
Typogram of Lucien Bodard
1965, 25½ x 34 ins
gouache on paper
Private collection
RAYMOND ABELLIO « TYPOGRAMMES » ANDRÉ SCHOELLER GALLERY, CATALOG PREFACE, PARIS 1966 (extract)
The ambition of Bellegarde’s typograms is not to produce portraits of the body, but of the soul–and even, if possible, of the mind. The face of any living being, man or woman, is often no more than a mask. Here, the artist projects onto the canvas, in meticulously composed and arranged areas, colors that act and react, symbolizing the subject’s inner being on every level: physical, psychic and mental.
JACQUES LASSAIGNE BLUMENTHAL GALLERY, CATALOG PREFACE, PARIS 1963
Bellegarde also conducts a real alchemical investigation by taking color to the point of incandescence, in order to extract the elemental forces to which the viewer will respond, perceiving the waves that are emitted, their irradiations and magnetism. His new paintings arrive like colored spears ripping space apart, like a sign, and transfiguring the opacity of matter.
PIERRE RESTANY « LES TYPOGRAMMES DE BELLEGARDE » REVIEW QUADRAM, 1963 (extract)
Bellegarde’s originality lies in the artistic synthesis he has succeeded in operating. This brillant result is not the product of a sudden revelation but of a slow conquest of consciousness, a lucid development of instinct at every stage of the painter’s work.
Jean-Jacques Lévêque review Cimaise, 1963 (extract)
Bellegarde’s modernity resides in his knowledge and use of the objective laws of color and sound, to purposes that are never experimental but truly expressive. Hence this lyricism, powerful and uncluttered, clear and hard; the musical stridency that exalts the eyes and confers joys in proportion to our times
