Claude Viseux (1927-2008)

Expérience automatique du crabe 1956 Ink on paper, signed, titled, dated and located in La Baule, lower right 56 x 73 cm The "stimuli-sign" experiment consists in replacing the painter with a crab that is coated with ink and then allowed to wander over a white sheet of paper. The traces left by the crustaceans are neither manipulated nor modified, but simply dated and signed. Through this series, Viseux proposes an "identification session" between the artist and this crab, frightened and stressed by the white paper, in a state of intense emotionality. A film entitled "Faciès" was made in 1960 by J. Veinat to document this experience, but was banned in England by the Animal Protection League. Claude Viseux was born and raised in Champagne-sur-Oise, near Paris. In 1946, he attended architecture classes at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He then met Jean Prouvé and Constantin Brancusi, and finally decided to turn to painting. Success was almost immediate, with his first exhibition at Galerie Vibaud in 1952, and by 1955 his work was being shown at René Drouin, before Daniel Cordier chose him - for his very first exhibition! - in 1956. In 1957, he was honored by Léo Castelli in New York! The 4 works we are offering in this sale bear witness to these prosperous years. From 1959-1960, he created his first sculptures from objects found on the seashore, impressions of stones and seaweed cast in bronze, then industrial steel cut, assembled and welded, in the manner of his surrealist friends Max Ernst, Man Ray, Henri Michaux... In 1972, he represented the French pavilion at the Venice Biennale, alongside Christian Boltanski, Jean le Gac and Gérard Titus-Carmel, and unveiled his famous Instables series. The same year, he installed an immense stainless steel sculpture suspended in the Auber RER station in Paris. In 1977, to celebrate his 50th anniversary, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris organized an exhibition entitled "Viseux" from June to September. In the '80s and '90s, he travelled extensively in India, whose myths and traditions are subtly reflected in his drawings and collages, and their influence translated into sculpture. A year before his death, while living in Anglet - still close to the water - Claude Viseux continued his collages, blending the marine world with troubling industrial forms - echoes of the Expériences automatiques du crabe (Automatic Crab Experiments) of the 1950s - and the sculptures that mark out his career. In the words of Geneviève Bonnefoi: "Through such diverse research, we can discover in Viseux's work a rather surprising continuity, an indisputable mark of his personality and temperament. He is one of those artists passionate about technique and knowledge who tend towards a total art, the only one capable of expressing the different aspirations of today's man".