Page 36 - Studio International - October 1965

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modern art must 1·eflect contemporary time. You will
therefore understand that it was indispensable for me
to complete my collection of medieval paintings by
adding contemporary works of art.
How did you go about building up your collection of
Modern Art?
First of all, let me cast a retrospective glance at the
historical development: the breaking-up of the estab­
lished order is manifest in Impressionism. It may sound
simple, but it is illustrative, to objectify the conception
of the established order with the disintegration of
representational art. To put it briefly, the manifestations
of the disintegration of Impressionism, the feverish
treatises of the Expressionists and the colour orgies of
the Fauves, the geometrizations of the Cubists, inevit­
ably brought with them the loss of the traditional
concept of nature, of the object, and created a new
philosophy of life in art, analogous to the great scientific
1 discoveries of the microcosm and the macrocosm. As
Piet Mondrian 1872-1944 a result of the dissolution of the old world of ideas,
Composl(/on 1928
45 x 45 cm many new Isms came into being. The aim of this variety
of newly-created trends was to integrate the familiar
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Max Ernst image of the universe in some objective form or other
Habakuk 1928
Plaster into the new order. The most legitimate attempt was
Surrealism which, in a last effort to save the old­
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Sam Francis established order, conjures up pictures derived from the
CompOSl(/On 1954 world of dreams, from the realm between the conscious
Mixed techni�ue
103 x 69 cm and the unconscious. But the position of non-repre­
sentational expression could no longer be shaken. I
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Hans Hartung hold this art form to be the most valid statement of our
Composl(/on 1950
45 x 73 cm century. It has freed the artist from copying nature and
from reproducing the anecdotal. It has prepared him
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Georges Mathieu for a new spiritualization and for a deepening of his
Denys L' Aeropag,re 1956 creative power. My collection, therefore, had to be
89 x 145 cm.
154