Georges AUTARD

Georges Autard born in Cannes on 17 April 1951 is a French painter and engraver.
He lives and works in Marseille and was a teacher at the Marseille-Méditerranée Higher School of Art and Design. His work is part of the abstract expressionist movement.
Starting to paint in 1975 while attending the University of Provence in Marseille, Georges Autard, who obtained his master's degree in 1976, was initially a mathematics teacher.
After his accumulations of objects in 1982-1984 - les Lunettes, les Vestes, les Bicyclettes -, The works of Georges Autard show clear reminiscences of his training, since they suggest blackboards full of signs and writings, as if for a story that seems codified. In 1990, at the same time as he tackled two of his important themes, Per ornamento and Dessins napolitains, Georges Autard gave his paintings more substance and more colour. Interested then in the work of Claude Viallat, simultaneously fascinated by a Descente de croix from Fra Angelico.

He asserts himself « expressionist » and « narrative », but also pursued by the idea of chaos. Several disordered narratives interfere in a single painting, as Annie Pagès. As Dessin napolitain (pastel) is thus made up of« Islands of meaning » It is heterogeneous, plural, and features snippets of crosses, bloody Christian nails, captioned with the word « relic »and the omnipresent writing of the name of Pythagoras which appears there unexpectedly, in the manner of a mathematical interference (what Autard calls « le bon sens ») in a mystical universe (which, as a play on words, he leads to become « le Bon Sang »). « Laughing to the extreme at puns, double meanings and analogies », thereby shifting the « sens »Autard builds bridges that bring together different fields, the logical order and the sacred order, « the analytical and the metaphysical », and even more directly Christ (the nails-relicsreliques) and the anti-Christ (Pythagore), offering Élisabeth Védrenne to interpret that « The loss of this blood led to the loss of meaning, then to the absence of the centre, then to the absence of the linear, leading in turn to the multiplication of beams, itself equal to the loss of the single meaning, to the reign of simultaneity. ». Thus, distributing the « Islands of meaning » that are the figurative motifs (here the nail and the bits of the cross) and the legends (here the words « relic » and « Pythagore ») into an abstract surface, deprived of a centre and yet geometrically organised in striations and multicoloured arabesques, the work finally suggests to Jean-Pierre Delarge a fragment of 1930s wallpaper.

From 1998 onwards, Georges Autard regularly travelled to the high places of Tibetan Buddhism (eight trips to Ladakh and Zanskar) and Zen Buddhism (four trips to Japan, where he studied the language), which inspired both his abstract series - the Prosternations inspired by the traces of Tibetan monks crawling on the ground - than semi-figurative Dessins sur papier untitled paintings that evoke monastic life. At the same time, other paintings lead him from quotations of Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet's Water Lilies, Pablo Picasso and Joseph Beuys to his Slogans (Paradise NowMy black is backWisdom and compassion…).

GERMANY

  • Cologne, Ludwig museum.

CANADA

  • Montréal, contemporary art museum of Montréal.
  • Québec, Beaux Arts national museum of Québec

FRANCE

  • Regional Fund for Contemporary Art of the Regions Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, Centre-Val de Loire, Orléans, Franche-Comté, Besançon, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Marseille, Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse, Occitanie, Montpellier.
  • Angers, arthoteca.
  • Céret, modern Art museum.
  • Digne-les-Bains, Gassendi museum
  • La Seyne-sur-Mer, villa Tamaris.
  • Mâcon, Ursulines museum
  • Marseille arthoteca Antonin Artaud; municipal collections; contemporary Art museum; Cantini museum.
  • Martigues, Ziem museum
  • Nice, modern Art museum and contemporary Art museum.
  • Paris : fund deposits and Consignment, National contemporary Art funds; works deposited at the Consulate General of France in Chicago and at the Research and Higher Education Assessment Agency in Paris.
  • Toulon, Art museum.
  • Toulouse, Les Abattoirs.

ITALY

  • Naples, French Institute.
  • SACEM, Neuilly-sur-Seine.
  • Quasar (Anne-Marie and Jean-Jacques Lescougues collection), Saint-André-de-Cubzac.
  • Guy Savoy, restaurant L’Atelier Maître Albert, rue Maître-Albert, Paris.
  • Hôtel Royal Westminster, Menton (Vacances bleues Foundation)
  • Jean et Gisèle Boissieu, Marseille.
  • Jean-Louis Marcos (1947-2012), Marseille.

By Claire Gravel, Georges Autard, painter-mathematician inLe Devoir, Montréal, September 1988.

By Claire Gravel, Georges Autard, painter-mathematician inLe Devoir, Montréal, September 1988.