Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Claude Bellegarde holds a singular position in contemporary art. His early work anticipated the achromaticism of the early 1950s. When he reinvented himself with the use of color, his successors--Manzoni, Ryman and others--were making their mark with the use of white. In the 1970s, his "human lifes" (as opposed to still lifes), "typograms" and "chromatic cubicles" exposed interior landscapes. Bellegarde also explored the melding of paint and organic materials to capture the effects of color in space: the ephemeral moment of first sight. Today, his use of gray is informed by his experience with color.