François Arnal

The work

Du dégoût ressenti (A feeling of disgust) / 2005
100 x 100 cm / 39,3 x 39,3 in. Painting on wood
François Arnal / 1924, La Vallette-du-Var, França – 2012, París.

The simplicity of the pictorial gesture with the artist repeating sixteen times diagonally slanted brushstrokes, with white paint on a clear wood board, contrasted with the expressive contundence of the title, a felling of disgust.
The pictorial gesture automatically superimposes the visible texture of the brush with the organic verticality of the wooden edges which does not act alone as it does if it is part of the object.
Thus the artwork brings together a deliberate pictorial choise with the inherent automatism orgànic of the wood’s organic growth

The artist

François Arnal is one of the few artists in the Stämpfli Foundation collection born in the 1920s. He began his career practicing abstract painting based on automatic and expressionist gestures with a surrealist foundation. He was generally considered close to lyrical abstraction and informalism between 1947 and 1968, when he stopped painting.
He devoted himself to designing artist’s furniture in a different style: austere, geometric, and on occasion referencing the ready-made. One example is his véli-vélo tablet.
In 1975, he returned to painting, evolving towards minimalism.