-SOLD- ARMAN 1986 - Painting on canvas with applied violin parts and brushes.

Arman Fernandez (1928-2005), a leading exponent and founder, along with Yves Klein, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Raymond Hains, and critic Pierre Restany, of Nouveau Réalisme, defined as a "new perceptive approach to reality". SOLD The work we are presenting is registered with the Arman Studio Archives in New York under number APA# 8021.04.178, and on the back, it bears the stamp and label of the Archives Denyse Durand Ruel. Violin parts and numerous brushes have been applied to the painted canvas, which is enclosed within a plexiglass display case. Signed and dated Arman -86- on the back. Son of an antique dealer and a cellist, Arman trained at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Nice and the École du Louvre in Paris, where he began by creating a series of abstract paintings. In 1954, he moved away from traditional painting to dedicate himself to Cachets, works composed of stamps on paper repeated obsessively, inspired by the works of Kurt Schwitters and the rhythms of Jackson Pollock's canvases. Arman's specific artistic practice consists of appropriating society's scraps, everyday objects, and reconfiguring them with a new meaning through a dramatic, violent action that is both gestural and pictorial. The object is dismembered, broken, or burned to exemplify the self-destructive nature of consumer society. The drama is then poetically increased by the pictorial intervention, which confirms and accentuates the violence of the gesture and reconfigures the object with a new language. What links all his works are the objects themselves, the absolute protagonists of his art. It was in the early 1960s that his style evolved and Arman realized his nature as an artist exponent of the Nouveau Réalisme movement. The objects themselves become the work of art, as had already happened in the Dada period, from which, however, there is a conceptual detachment. They are not simply exhibited as a desecrating symbol of artistic tradition, but subjected to a destructive and invasive action, the same that society exerts on the values and vision of contemporary man. Between the 1980s and 1990s, Arman returned to painting in a literal way, creating a series of works in which squeezed tubes and brushes become an integral part of the canvas. In 1959, Arman exhibited for the first time in Milan at the Apollinaire gallery. In 1961, Arman exhibited at the Schwarz gallery in Milan. In 1962, he participated in the exhibition "The New Realism" at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, where he would be invited for his first solo gallery show the following year. Between 1959 and 1965, Arman created a series of works of epochal value that elevated the everyday, the urban, and modernity to privileged subjects of his poetics, bringing his artistic reflection to maturity: "Allures," canvases bearing the imprints of objects immersed in color, "Accumulations," collections of everyday objects selected by categories, "Poubelles," collections of waste, debris, residues, "Coupes," objects sectioned in two, "Colères," tools and things broken, shattered, and burned, then reassembled on wooden panels. Famous for having made the everyday and the objects taken from it his own palette of colors, Arman institutionalized the destructive act as an act of artistic creativity, offering the public a different idea of aesthetic and artistic beauty. His creations are populated by musical instruments, bicycles, clocks, cars, coins, and shoes. In 1987, he participated in Documenta VIII in Kassel with the work Descente aux enfers. He was awarded the title of Knight of the Legion of Honor by President Mitterand in 1989. 
Measures H x L x P 80 x 60 x 12,5