Jean Degottex (1918 - 1988)

Jean Degottex

Jean Degottex was a French painter and a pioneer of lyrical abstraction.

Self-taught, in the army in Tunisia and Algeria when he was in his early 20s, Jean painted his first figurative paintings influenced by Fauvism. In 1951, Degottex was awarded the Kandinsky Prize, and from 1954 he began to paint in the style of gesture abstraction. He was also particularly inspired by East Asian calligraphy and Zen philosophy.

Degottex painted large-scale works, often in series, and in the 1970s began experimenting with paper art, folding and tearing paper. His work has always been characterized by extreme minimalism, and the artist meditates for a long time before starting to draw.