Aurelie Nemours

Abstract collage by artist Aurelie Nemours, made in 1968 from newspaper at the request of Imre Pan.
Aurelie Nemours, Untitled, 1968, papers on cardboard, 14 x 19 cm
Abstract collage by artist Aurelie Nemours, made in 1968 from newspaper at the request of Imre Pan.
Aurelie Nemours, Untitled, 1965, papers on cardboard, 19 x 14 cm
Abstract collage by artist Aurelie Nemours, made in 1968 from newspaper at the request of Imre Pan.
Aurelie Nemours, Untitled, 1968, papers on cardboard, 19 x 14 cm

“Aurelie Nemours’ collages are a surprise. Visual. Plastic. Poetic. For those who are used to, a little distractedly, to the artist’s geometric works of line – horizontal, vertical – and point, to her black and white as rigorous as they are sensual, to her vibrant flat tints of monochrome colours, to the deep, velvety void of a repeated infinity that she unfolds from series to series, her collages from 1965 and 1968, produced at the request of Imre Pan for the editions he tirelessly designed, interwoven, rhizomatic, fragmented, and whose titles he constantly repeated (Signe, Signe Morphèmes, Signe L’art du dessin, L’estampe moderne, Morphèmes, Mini-Musée, Préverbes… ), prove, upon discovery, to be sets of a singular unity and, above all, a fruitful step aside for the artist. “
Marjorie Miccuci

Elodie Seguin

Drawing from 2018 by French artist Elodie Seguin made with inks and acrylic paint representing a pyramid seen from above composed of blue, black and pink triangles.
Elodie Seguin, White Volume (COL3), 2018, acrylic paint and inks on paper, 55 x 76 cm
Drawing from 2018 by the French artist Elodie Seguin made with inks and acrylic paint representing a pyramid seen from above made up of blue, pink and white triangles.
Elodie Seguin, White Volume (Z), 2018, acrylic paint and inks on paper, 55 x 76 cm

Exploring the border between painting and sculpture, Elodie Seguin’s (b. 1984) work is intrinsically linked to the spaces in which it is exhibited. Her installations and murals integrate the specific dimensions and configurations of each site to “make place” with it. They blend with volumes and surfaces, the space becoming the interpretative framework of the work as much as it is interpreted by it.

Painted with brushes on paper but designed to be spatialized, the works belonging to the White Volume series are the result of a long research on the interactions between luminosity and colour. They represent pyramids seen from above whose volume is materialised by subtly orchestrated juxtapositions of colours that describe the interactions of the four faces of the pyramid with projected light. Each composition describes a specific light situation, the play of colours inviting contemplation as much as analysis.

Elodie Seguin’s work has been exhibited in numerous institutions such as the MACBA in Buenos Aires, the MUDAM (Luxembourg), the French Cultural Centre in Milan, the Pernod Ricard Foundation (Paris), the Espace Lafayette Anticipations (Paris), the Frac Bretagne, or the MUCEM (Marseille).

Colette Brunschwig

Abstract work in acrylic and Indian ink by the French artist Colette Brunschwig representing grey volumes on a black background, dating from 1973
Colette Brunschwig, Sans titre, 1973, acrylic and India ink on paper, 49.5 x 64.5 cm
Abstract watercolour by the French artist Colette Brunschwig created in 1995, depicting light grey volumes on a dark grey background.
Colette Brunschwig, Sans titre, 1995, watercolour on paper, 28 x 38 cm
Abstract drawing in Indian ink by the French artist Colette Brunschwig between 2004 and 2011 representing volumes and hatching in grey
Colette Brunschwig, Sans titre, 2004 – 2011, India ink and colored ink on paper, 26 x 36 cm
Abstract watercolour and gouache drawing by French artist Colette Brunschwig, created in 2000, showing squares, rectangles and cross-hatching in brown, ochre and black.
Colette Brunschwig, Sans titre, 2000, watercolour and gouache on paper, 23 x 31 cm
Abstract drawing in Indian ink by the French artist Colette Brunschwig, 1950, showing rectangles, parallelepipeds and cross-hatching in black and grey.
Colette Brunschwig, Sans titre, 1950, India ink on paper, 19 x 28 cm
Abstract watercolour by the French artist Colette Brunschwig, produced in 1960, showing two rectangles, each containing a circle and blue and ochre lines.
Colette Brunschwig, Sans titre, 1960, watercolor on paper, 15 x 21 cm

Born in Le Havre in 1927, Colette Brunschwig was about twenty years old when she moved to Paris in 1945 to study painting. Marked by a conflict she had lived through in hiding and by the trauma of the Shoah, she did her apprenticeship during the immediate post-war period, which was akin to a “year zero” for artists confronted with the scale of the catastrophe. Like many surviving Jewish intellectuals with whom she would maintain links – Emmanuel Levinas, whose seminars she followed, the Hellenist Jean Bollack, who frequented her studio and with whom she corresponded, and Paul Célan, whose poetry she would later illustrate – Colette Brunschwig sought to overcome and transcend the annihilation.

Sensitized to the problems of abstraction by André Lhote (1885-1962), whose teaching she followed from 1946 to 1949, the artist found in abstract painting a possible path and even a logical end, namely the culmination of the trends at work in impressionism and cubism. Her reflection led her from Monet (1840-1926) to Malevitch (1879-1935), from the Water Lilies to the White Square on a White Background, from the dissolution of forms to the total abolition of the image and of all representation. At the end of the 1960s, she discovered the painting of ancient China, the works of scholar painters such as Wang Wei (701-761), Mi Fu (1051-1107) or Shitao (1641-1719), whose fundamental relationship to writing she admired, as well as the aesthetic and philosophical conception of emptiness (understood not in opposition to the full, but in a complementarity between form and formlessness).

Linking Jewish metaphysics, modern abstraction and oriental thought of nothingness, the work of Colette Brunschwig occupies a singular place in the abstract avant-garde. If the artist initially feels close to lyrical abstraction, attracted by the possibility of an art that approaches writing, the production of signs, she will refuse the immediacy of the gesture to introduce into her work a temporal dimension, a game of superimpositions, accumulations and repetitions through which the form emerges. Each gesture covers or extends another. Hashes, strokes, washes, stencils are added in layers, giving birth to depths, to this “third dimension” dear to the artist. The techniques intermingle: Indian ink, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, oil. Recurring motifs emerge, fade away: circles and rectangles structuring the space without any question of geometric composition. All this in a palette that has never excluded color but has often preferred black and especially gray in all its shades.

Work with share, in margin of the other currents. But not isolated in the century, as evidenced by the companionship that linked the artist to Pierre Soulages (1919-2022), André Marfaing (1925-1987), Pierre Courtin (1921-2012), Árpád Szenes (1897-1985), Etienne Hajdu (1907-1996) or Charles Maussion (1923-2010). First exhibited in 1952 at Colette Allendy, Colette Brunschwig has been accompanied by several generations of Parisian galleries throughout her career, including Nane Stern, La Roue, Clivages, Convergences and Jocelyn Wolff.

Abraham & Wolff’s drawing room offers a selection of works from 1950 to 2012, showing the consistency and unity of his work.

  

Isa Melsheimer

Gouache drawing on paper by the German artist Isa Melsheimer depicting a modernist building.
Isa Melsheimer, Nr 363 , 2015, gouache on paper, 24 x 17 cm
Gouache drawing on paper by the German artist Isa Melsheimer depicting a modernist building.
Isa Melsheimer, Nr 330, 2013, gouache on paper, 42 x 56 cm
Gouache drawing on paper by the German artist Isa Melsheimer depicting a modernist building in front of which is standing a woman dressed in blue with an eagle on her hair.
Isa Melsheimer, Nr 187, 2007, gouache on paper, 24 x 31,5 cm
Gouache drawing on paper by the German artist Isa Melsheimer showing a modernist building with a fox standing in front of it.
Isa Melsheimer, Nr 331, 2013, gouache on paper, 42 x 56 cm

Closely linked to the history of modern architecture, the work of Isa Melsheimer (born in 1968) has for many years questioned the ideological vision of nature and human existence that underlies the achievements of modernist architects.

Continuing her important work as a ceramist, the artist creates gouaches that depict buildings whose deserted surroundings sometimes see wild animals and enigmatic silhouettes emerge. Her iconography draws from the architectural projects of Claude Parent, Michael Graves, Carl Fingerhuth, Owen Luder or Balkrishna Doshi, whose constructions she reproduces from images gleaned from publications, press clippings or the Internet. Drawing after drawing, Melsheimer pays homage to the stylistic audacity of modernity while at the same time underlining its failures through the omnipresence of concrete, the king material that has become the symbol of an architecture that failed in its quest for progress. 

These images, the artist enamels them with references and innuendos to the history of modernism but also to clothing fashion or mass culture. She thus elaborates representations that are both pessimistic and light, leading us to reflect on our relationship to the living space, the place we occupy in it and the place we leave to the rest of the living. She gives us a glimpse of a disturbing future where we seem to have disappeared, victims of an ultimate crisis, and where only buildings whose utopian ideals are long gone remain as a testimony of our passage.

Laura Lamiel

Red ink drawing by French artist Laura Lamiel from 2020 depicting lungs, from the series Territoires intimes
Laura Lamiel, Territoires intimes, 2020-22, indian ink, ballpoint pen, graphite on paper, 42 x 29,7 cm, unique
Drawing in Indian ink by the French artist Laura Lamiel representing a pair of eyes from the series Les yeux de W
Laura Lamiel, The Eyes of W, 2021-22, ink and pencil on paper, 42 x 29,7 cm, unique
Red ink drawing by French artist Laura Lamiel dated 2020 representing two hands, from the Territoires intimes series
Laura Lamiel, Territoires intimes, 2020-22, indian ink, ballpoint pen, graphite on paper, 42 x 29,7 cm, unique

Laura Lamiel (born in 1948) is best known for her poetic installations in the form of delimited spaces in which materials and objects charged with emotional resonance are arranged according to an enigmatic logic, but she has maintained a practice of drawing throughout her career. 

Some of them have recently appeared in the artist’s installations, first in tension with other objects, then more independently. The development of a piece entitled Forclose (2018) was notably the occasion for Laura Lamiel to elaborate a series of motifs whose production she describes thus: “I decided to unfold this piece (Forclose) and I started to make drawings that took on their autonomy. I made them, for several months, late at night. I had the energy, but I had to wait for it to arrive, I had to have the right gesture. I prepare the inks and the papers, and then there comes a moment in the night when it’s right, I can go, and it can last two or three hours. I started to draw a whole vocabulary of languages; I rushed through sheets of paper, smearing them (…), opening my mouth, making heads, rhizomes, plants come out.” (Interview with François Piron, in LL, Paris, Paraguay Press, 2019). It emerges a certain violence of this impulsive set also constituted by lungs, hands, faces taken in interlacing features. A violence that is accentuated by the systematic use of a red ink that evokes the energy of blood. 

This asceticism of work, the artist had already practiced in a series of large circular drawings exhibited in 2013 as part of the exhibition Ostinato, dessin, musique : interactions, in Namur. They take the form of myriad pen strokes ritually aligned to form concentric circles. Entitled 3 years, 3 months, 3 days, in reference to the traditional duration of the retreat that aspiring lamas must make in Thibetan Buddhism, these drawings resemble spiritual exercises based on repetition (such as the recurrent chanting of the sacred syllables of the Buddhist mantra Om mani padme hum).

A third series of works entitled W’s Eyes shows pairs of eyes emerging from a haze of black crosshatching. These eyes that Laura Lamiel calls “owl eyes” are part of a research on the theme of the double, the W can indeed be read as the letter V accompanied by its symmetrical reflection – just as the artist’s initials, LL, can evoke this eminently problematic question of reflection and double. They were exhibited in installations deployed in 2019 at the CRAC of Sète, installations that exploited the games of reflections and occultation of one-way mirrors. 

These drawings by Laura Lamiel are exhibited in collaboration with the Marcelle Alix gallery (Paris). 

Katinka Bock

Monotype on paper dating from 2016 by the artist Katinka Bock made with the folding of a paper plane painted blue
Katinka Bock, Between arrival and departure, 2016, monotype on paper, 66 x 50 cm, unique
Monotype on paper dating from 2011 by the artist Katinka Bock, made by printing the sheet on grass painted blue
Katinka Bock, Gras (Wolke), 2011, monotype, paint on paper, 8 sheets: 31.5 x 44 cm each, unique

“What we do comes from life, art always remains in life, it is a contribution to life.” – Katinka Bock

Katinka Bock (born in 1976) is an important artist on the international art scene, living and working in Berlin and Paris. 

Using a wide variety of media (sculptures, films, photographs, artists’ books, or installations…), materials (such as clay, stone, wood, bronze, plants, water, etc.), and techniques (folding, rolling, molding, marking, making an imprint, finding a balance, overturning…), Katinka Bock has been developing since the beginning of the 2000’s an artistic practice that is intimately linked to the issues of space, time, and materials.

Her works take shape in an architectural, urban, social, temporal and environmental context that marks them and that they mark in return. Anxious to make perceptible the particularity of the places in which she intervenes, the work is never for Katinka Bock an end, but a vehicle that leads us to experience time and space. By conceiving works in immediate relation with the latter, she plunges us, with discretion, into the heart of an intimate and poetic journey, which carries us through the history, customs and symbols of a territory. 

Miriam Cahn

Pencil drawing of a survivor by the Swiss artist Miriam Cahn, 1998
Miriam Cahn, überlebender , 8.2.98, drawing on paper, 30 x 21 cm
Pencil drawing by Swiss artist Miriam Cahn, 2006, depicting a winding road through the hills.
Miriam Cahn, berlin mit fluss + durchsichtigen hügeln träumen, 11.4.06, pencil on paper, 46 x 41 cm
Coloured pigment drawing by the Swiss artist Miriam Cahn dating from 1994, from the Sarajevo series, showing three heads in profile
Miriam Cahn, rufend, 19.02.1994, water and pigments on paper, 3 sheets : 42 x 29.5 cm each
Charcoal drawing by the Swiss artist Miriam Cahn from the Sarajevo series, showing a young soldier
Miriam Cahn, junger soldat, 23.05.1995, charcoal on paper, 42 x 29,7 cm

Inspired by feminist and protest struggles, the work of Miriam Cahn (born 1949) draws its energy from the anger and indignation felt in the face of violence and injustice. The war in the former Yugoslavia, the Abu Ghraib scandal, the refugee crisis, gender inequality, and violated bodies of women around the world are all events and realities that the artist confronts, giving rise to impulsive, vehement works (paintings, drawings, and photographs) created through an energetic process that engages her entire body.

Her very personal iconography is haunted by the themes of sex, power, violence, death and their complex relationships. The representation of the body conceived as a place for the exercise of power occupies a central place. Ambiguous, grotesque, ghostly, the bodies represented by Miriam Cahn display raw and uncompromising nudity. They stare at us from the canvas, smile at us in a disturbing way, exhibit their genitals, give or receive blows, all thrown into schematic landscapes, in undecided situations, endowed with an irradiating and enigmatic presence.

While Miriam Cahn has developed a practice of oil painting over the past several years that exploits the expressive potential of color in monumental works, drawing has always been central to her work, beginning with her earliest works in the late 1970s. Our drawing cabinet houses a selection of works produced between 1980 and 2019. We find the same energy that inhabits the large drawings made with black chalk on highway pillars in 1979, the use of vibrant and electric colors characteristic of her paintings today, recurring motifs such as faces with empty eyes or sexual acts taking the form of violent struggles, works born from her visit to Sarajevo in the early 90s, while the city was still under siege, architectural tracings, landscapes, finger-drawn representations that evoke cave art, but also polyptychs and unexpected works that reveal a little-known side of Miriam Cahn’s work.

Prinz Gholam

Prinz Gholam, Similitude (Giandomenico Farewell), colored pencil on paper, 122 x 86 cm, 2018
Prinz Gholam, Similitude (Tetrarchy), colored pencil on paper, 122 x 86 cm, 2018

The duo Prinz Gholam (born 1969) and Michel Gholam (born 1963) has developed a performance practice over the past 20 years in which both artists use their bodies to reinterpret various cultural references ranging from ancient paintings to sculpture, contemporary art, cinema and media images. These cultural stereotypes are internalized and embodied by the two men through precise choreographies during which they execute a succession of carefully chosen poses, moving like sculptures in motion.

Each of these performances gives rise to the creation of videos, photographs and drawings. The latter are conceived as fields of experimentation that participate in the elaboration of the performances while extending them in another form.

Especially created for the Punta della Dogana on the occasion of the group exhibition “Dancing with myself” (08/04 – 16/12/2018), the performance entitled “Similitude” more or less directly summons historical and artistic references drawn from Venetian history but also from the exhibition itself. Its development was accompanied by the creation of a series of large drawings on paper. Done in colored pencil, they show the duo in various poses borrowed from works by Giandomenico Tiepolo and John Singer Sargent, from Igor Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress or from a bas-relief in St. Mark’s Basilica. The choreographic fragments that are thus elaborated are inscribed in representations of Venice and the Punta della Dogana.

Franz Erhard Walther

Werkzeichnung by the German artist Franz Erhard Walther dating from 1967-1969
Franz Erhard Walther, Werkzeichnung , 1967-1969, watercolour, graphite, pencil, collage on paper, 21,5 x 29,5 cm
Werkzeichnung by the German artist Franz Erhard Walther dating from 1968-1969
Franz Erhard Walhter, Werkzeichnung, 1968-1969, watercolour, type-writing ink, colored-pencil, pencil on paper, 21,5 x 29,5 cm

The creator of a fundamental work at the crossroads of minimalism and conceptualism, Franz Erhard Walther revolutionized the traditional approach to sculpture by introducing a participatory dimension into his practice. Developed between 1963 and 1969, his major work, 1. Werksatz, is composed of 58 fabric objects designed to be manipulated by spectators who become users. Through the manipulation of these objects, users are invited to experience new interactions, new sensations, to become aware of the time and space in which the activation takes place, to establish in short another form of relationship with others and with the real world. 

Walther was the first user of the 1. Werksatz pieces, and thus the first to experience them. This confrontation with his work was documented by the artist in a crucial set of Werkzeichnungen (working drawings). Originally conceived as a private diary, the Werkzeichnungen take the form of two-sided diagrams in which Walther records his experiences during each activation (a drawing is therefore always linked to a specific object). In order to transcribe his feelings and the effects produced by the manipulation, the artist has elaborated a language that is both pictorial and scriptural, which unfolds on the back and front of the sheet, the two sides interacting with each other. Writing occupies a determining place in this work of expression. Walther invented a terminology that is still used today to describe the works. 

Each activation constituting a unique event, producing sensations specific to the place, the moment and the partners, the Werkzeichnungen were reiterated in the course of successive activations. They positively testify to the practical effectiveness of the participatory concept behind 1. Werksatz, namely the possibility for each user to have an experience of his own.

Rarely exhibited at first, these drawings were gradually shown to the public to become today inseparable from the elements of 1. Werksatz

Francisco Tropa

Abstract etching from 2010 by Portuguese artist Francisco Tropa
Francisco Tropa, Polynésie, 2010, etching, 15 x 20 cm
Screen-printed box from 2020 by the Portuguese artist Francisco Tropa containing sand and screen-printed reproductions of advertisements from an old scientific journal entitled The Lung and the Heart
Francisco Tropa, Le poumon et le coeur, 2020, silkscreen on paper, sand, fabric
Silkscreen print from 2012 by Portuguese artist Francisco Tropa inspired by medieval cosmography in shades of blue, yellow and green.
Francisco Tropa, Terra platónica, 2012, silkscreen on paper, 56 x 76 cm
Graphite rubbing from 2009 by the Portuguese artist Francisco Tropa
Francisco Tropa, Herbes, 2009, graphite on paper, 45 x 33.5 cm
Monotype from 2014 by the Portuguese artist Francisco Tropa representing a form painted in brown and blue.
Francisco Tropa, 2014, etching ink on paper velin (monotype), 54 x 43 cm, unique

Francisco Tropa (born in 1968) is the creator of a universe of his own, unfolding through complex installations that evoke themes such as the body in movement, time, death, play and archaeology. These installations are made up of mysterious objects that the artist elaborates at the crossroads of multiple artistic, historical, literary or philosophical references, which feed an original reflection turned towards the problems that cross the history of sculpture from Antiquity to our days. Combining conceptual thinking with traditional know-how, Francisco Tropa’s creations employ a wide range of media and techniques, from watchmaking to casting, from blown glass to video, and from painting to various printing and engraving processes. 

The drawing room houses works as diverse as abstract etchings, rubbings reminiscent of Max Ernst’s (1891-1976) experiments, drawings and silkscreens inspired by medieval cosmography and the architectural utopia of Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915), as well as silkscreened boxes. So many works that testify to a constantly renewed inspiration.