FRIEZE MASTERS Spotlight. London
October 12-16, 2022.
MARTHE WÉRY Série Lignées
The gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of rarely displayed works of Marthe Wéry (Brussels, 1930-2005), from the estate of the artist, with the series she produced in the 70s, called lignées. This period was exhibited at Paul Mainz Gallery, Cologne, in 1974 and 1975. Marthe Wéry pushes the limits of painting, exploring all its basic components. Inspired by artists such as Kazimir Malevich or Barnett Newman, her work evolved from geometrical studies and minimalistic work on paper to monochromes that are marked by colour, the interplay of light, transparency and structure provides her paintings tactility and poetry, moving her away from sterile minimalism.
During a trip to the USA, Marthe Wéry discovered American Minimalism, as well as, and especially Unism, which Polish Wladyslaw Strzeminski theorised during the inter-war period. He considered the painting as a whole made of equal parts. This involved no longer privileging any one element of the painting through the composition, but considering it as an overall unit to be treated as a whole. “What characterised my evolution, she would explain later, is the progressive decomposition of the form. It is a deconstruction in order to restore a more fundamental structure.” This more fundamental structure was the line, considered not as a movement, but as a series of very tightly bunched points, to condense the vibration. She entirely covered her paintings with parallel lines traced with a rule, the form thus merging with the format, even more so in the series that she now privileged (diptych, triptych, or polyptych).
By the end of the 1970s, Marthe Wéry start to achieve international recognition. Among her numerous exhibitions, we could note the Venice Biennale in 1982 with a solo show in the Belgium Pavillion.
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