artist/ QUENTIN

FRANCE

Bernard Quentin is a French painter, sculptor and visual artist born in Flamincourt.
In Paris, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. Immersed in post-war Saint Germaine des Près, Bernard Quentin joined Boris Vian’s gang and frequented the Parisian intelligentsia of surrealist, existentialist and literary circles.
Bernard Quentin based his artistic work on writing and signs. The discovery in 1946 of Paul Klee’s works preserved in Bern (his approach to Oriental and African writing), the rock inscriptions of the Vallée des Merveilles, the Lapland runes and the automatic writing of the Italian Futurists fueled his creative energy.
This creative energy also found expression in architecture – he studied with Le Corbusier the creation of an artists’ housing estate on the Sainte-Baume – and in design: in 1963, he presented inflatable seats at the Iris Clert gallery in Paris. Seats exhibited in 1964 at the World’s Fair in New York.
Described by Salvador Dali as the pioneer of cybernetic and electronic art, Bernard Quentin’s work explores the field of possibilities of signs of all origins. He began with automatic shorthand graffiti, then with written ideograms, which he exhibited at the Galerie du Luxembourg in 1946.The pictorial grammar of his beginnings (sparse writing) gradually transforms and unfolds into a broader, more structured style. In 1952, invited by Charles Estienne, Bernard Quentin took part in the exhibition “La Nouvelle école de Paris”, and in 1953 in “Lyrisme et abstraction”. By the end of the 50s, signs were disappearing, absorbed by a painting that was becoming more materialistic. He joined the Stadler gallery and was included in the “50 ans de peinture abstraite” exhibition.

His research into fluidity was followed in the 80s by swarming crowds mixed with writing and giant graffiti. Later, letters and words became the sole subject of the painting.
Bernard Quentin has established himself within the New School of Paris with an original and highly personal body of work, which questions the form of language and the language of form.
Bernard Quentin’s work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions, and is on display in museums such as Musée d’Art de Nantes, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Marseille and Musée Canti.