Page 46 - Studio International - November 1965

Fichet

by Pierre Cabanne

It is always dangerous to use the term 'spirituality' when
speaking of the work of a young painter. However since
the outstanding impression which he made at the
'Lourdes 64' exhibition where he proved the only artist
capable of penetrating and expressing through sug­
gestive shapes the mystery of the Advent. Fichet richly
deserves this description. He is not 'religious· nor
'Christian· but one who bears the true mark of inspiration.
The spiritual path which this thirty-eight-year-old
artist in quest of the Absolute has chosen to follow and

Palming 1965. 100 x 100 cm. Painting 1965. 150 x 150 cm.

Pamung 1963
which gives such weight and value to his work. is based
on the search for pictorial solutions to the metaphysical
problems with which he is preoccupied.
If he took a long time to find symbols capable of trans­
lating into the visual plane his emotions. enthusiasm and
anguish. the reason is quite simply that he was too
demanding to accept the stock-in-trade of other artists.
His search has ranged wide and his style has undergone
many changes-which have astonished those who
have followed his development over the last ten years.
When he transposed recently into his own style
Zurbaran·s Monk. all that Fichet retained from his model
was the spectral whiteness. He created a symbolic
image of faith with an immediate reality which can be
sensed rather than seen for the artist is not concerned
with visual 'resemblance·. In this field Fichet's aim has
been to develop a symbolic vocabulary-based on faith
-to express his spiritual experience; it is a vocabulary
rich in plastic expression of imaginative concepts.
Unwilling to be confined by such symbols he turned to
unexpected new images and searched for new syn­
aesthetic experiences. Few painters have moved from
canvas to canvas as quickly as Fichet has done in his
impatient search for new experience; in the best years of
his youth he has not been content simply to paint-he
has conveyed his own metaphysical fascinations.
Between the theme of the shroud of the Holy Face and
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