ARMAN

A major artist of the Ecole de Nice and the New Realist movement, Arman was born in Nice in 1928 and grew up surrounded by the various objects and treasures displayed in his father's antique store. He knew from childhood that he wanted to be a painter. He enrolled at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Nice and then attended the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Back in Nice, he met Yves Klein and Claude Pascal at the dojo where they practiced judo. It was a fundamental encounter. These three budding artists, fond of philosophy and spirituality, rejected traditional painting and sought, each in his own way, with the freedom, energy, audacity and fantasy of their 20s, to revolutionize the art world. They signed an idealistic pact by which each of them appropriated a part of the world: the sky for Klein, the air for Pascal the poet and the earth and its riches for Arman.  And this choice will mark their respective works until the last.

Arman, in a desire to transgress painting, became interested in the object and its intrinsic force, which he used first as a tool to leave a trace, a pace, an imprint in a movement, a gesture influenced by his martial arts practice. Gradually, guided by his fascination for the mass consumer society in which he evolves, Arman makes this object the central plastic material of his work and considers it the main witness of an era, giving it a strong sociological meaning. Curious and overflowing with energy, Arman will seek all his life to renew himself while remaining faithful to the central place he gives to the object and to his gestural mastery induced by his years of martial arts practice. Poubelles, colères, combustions, accumulations, cuts, cascades, fragmentations... are all gestures by which the artist transcends the chosen object in order to create a new aesthetic and a new mode of appropriation of the everyday while ensuring its durability.