artist/ Asse

France

Geneviève Asse was born in Morbihan (Vannes) in 1923 to publisher parents. She moved to Paris in 1932 and enrolled at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in 1940, but “never learned to paint”. She drew her inspiration from the atmosphere of her native Brittany, particularly the Rhuys peninsula, whose landscapes left a strong impression on her.
During the war, she took part in the fighting for the Liberation, enlisting in the FFI, then as an ambulance driver; she was awarded the Croix de Guerre. The painter Othon Friesz introduced her to the Echelle group in 1943, when she painted her first canvases. The following year, Asse took part in the “Salon des moins de trente ans”.
After the war, she returned to Paris and designed for the Bianchini-Ferrier, Flachard and Paquin fabric houses. There she met many writers and painters (Poliakoff, Nicolas de Staël, Beckett, etc.). Already, her art favoured light and colour, transparency, always seeking to translate her own relationship with the world, and she was already fond of rigorous, sober structures. For Geneviève Asse, blue, her favourite colour and the one that made her famous, is the colour of space. In 1954, her work came to the attention of the collector Jean Bauret, who organised the first exhibition of her work (Galerie Michel Warren, Paris). At the time, she was considered an abstract artist.
Her first retrospective exhibition was held in 1968 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Reims. She illustrated many writers (Y. Bonnefoy, Beckett, Frénaud, André du Bouchet, Ponge, etc.). Alongside her painting, Geneviève Asse developed her graphic work, composing her engravings using drypoint and burin, with great economy of line. She worked in tapestry, stained glass (Saint-Dié Cathedral, under the direction of Jean Bazaine) and Sèvres porcelain, constantly opening up the range of her work. Over the years, he has exhibited in various galleries in France (La Hune, Claude Bernard, Marwan Hoss, etc.) and abroad, and his work can now be found in a number of museums (Rennes, Bron, Caen, Beaubourg, etc.).