Gérard Fromanger

The work

Sans dessus dessous, tête à tête, rouge, jaune, bleu
(Upside down, face to face, red, yellow, blue)
2008
200 x 150 cm
Acrylic on canvas

The urban pedestrian is a constant in Fromanger’s works. «In the street,” he says, “I leave what is familiar at home to enter the street where everything is mysterious, changing, and at the same time banal” The table represents a group of people who are pleased with the information given in the urban space. Mais la référence spatiale a disparu, tout comme toute caractéristique qui les individualiserait. They are limited to immobile silhouettes and wandering monochromes.
The painting, divided horizontally into two symmetrical parts, doubles the images as it offers a horizontal view. Silhouette jacket is painted in either primary color (cyan, magenta, jaune) or white. These colors are flat. Depth is indicated only by the lesser height of the more distant figures. There is a certain rhythm to the order of the colors.
As the title suggests, there is neither top nor bottom. If we reverse it, only the colors filling the silhouettes change. The crowd continues to move from top to bottom, from north to south, moving determinedly toward its future. The space is now nothing more than a black background.
The painting revisits the classic theme of the walking group portrait, but, true to his political and social ideology, it is part of a narrative that the viewer is invited to imagine

The artist

(Jouars-Pontchartrain, France, 1939 – París, 2021)

A leading figure in Narrative Figuration and renowned for his political involvement, particularly in May 1968, Gérard Fromanger’s work seeks to capture the spirit of his time and update the dominant trends in our societies: a commercial world, flooded with media images, which today functions under the model of a digital computer network.
Closely linked to key figures in French culture, such as Godard, Deleuze, and many others with whom he collaborated, the name Gérard Fromanger evokes a world of images and references, themes, and figures: May 1968, red silhouettes, street scenes, photorealism, narrative figuration, painting, and politics.
It also determines the plastic modalities of Fromanger’s work: flat, unnuanced color, silhouettes, figurative motifs, and the crowd as a recurring theme.