AQUARELS – JEAN BAZAINE

PRESS RELEASE

Jean Bazaine was born in Paris in 1904. He is one of the founders of the new generation of French painters — a generation that began to gain recognition just before the outbreak of World War II. Bazaine has been regularly exhibiting his work since 1949, notably at Galerie Maeght in Paris.

The current exhibition showcases a selection of the artist’s latest watercolors. Bazaine’s watercolor technique is “pure, hard work,” as he himself describes it. It is not the light sketching commonly associated with watercolor; rather, Bazaine is said to be the first in art history to explore the extreme possibilities of watercolor technique in his own unique way. His watercolors are able to capture something truly exceptional. Bazaine uses thick, porous paper, wetting and scrubbing the color surface with cloths, and applying brushes of varying thicknesses to achieve different levels of translucency and to reveal the texture of the paper. The result is a distinctive, rich, and fresh form of expression.

Some of the works on display reflect a transitional phase in Bazaine’s art. Watercolor is for him a means to achieve the most austere and simple expression, a way to distill form and color. Although Bazaine’s watercolors are “untitled,” he is not striving for purely abstract expression. The underlying inspiration for his work remains the natural landscapes of Brittany—the sea, the light, and the open spaces.

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