Raoul Ubac

Raoul Ubac , born with Malmedy (Wallonia) the August 31st 1910 and died in Dieudonné (Oise) the March 24th 1985, is a nonfigurative painter French of Belgian origin , pertaining to the news École of Paris.

Biography

Raoul Ubac was born with Malmedy, small town of the Belgian Ardenne, where the family of its mother exploits a tannery since several generations and where his/her father is Justice of the Peace. Of 1920 with 1928, it makes its studies with Malmedy, traverses with foot part of the Europe and carries out in 1928 a first stay with Paris, where it meets in particular the painter Otto Freundlich. In 1929, a young professor makes him discover the first Manifeste of the Surréalisme .

Of 1930 with 1934, at the time of a second stay in Paris, Raoul Ubac ties contacts with the surrealist ones and attends the workshops of Montparnasse. It is registered then at the School of applied arts of Cologne, where it works the Dessin and the Photographie. During a voyage in Dalmatie, it realizes in 1932 in the island of Hvar of the “found stone assemblies” that it draws and photographs. It moves away then from painting to devote itself to the creation of photographs of surrealist spirit, which it exposes in 1933, for which it uses the processes of burning, solarization and the petrification.

In collaboration with Camille Bryen, which it has just met, Raoul Ubac publishes in Paris in 1934, under the name of Raoul Michelet a collection of poems and photographs. With Bryen still, it deposits “objects in the most unexpected places”, posts “poems and images on the walls” and divides of 1936 to the 1939 all activities of surrealist, côtoyant Hans Bellmer, Benjamin Péret, Victor Brauner and Raoul Hausmann. As from 1936, it engages in a series of photographs around the Combat of Penthésilée (the Queen of the Amazones and Achille) in which it combines multiple processes: association of negative, overprinting and solarization, superposition or shift of negative and the positive one, which give an impression of petrification, blowing, manuring, burning or net curtain of the stereotype. Often, it re-uses fragments the naked ones of its two models, his Agui wife and Marthe. Some of its photographs are published between 1937 and 1939 in the review Minotaure and André Breton order to him in 1938 the photography of the mannequins presented to the International exhibition of surrealism. He learns in parallel in 1936 engraving in the workshop from Stanley Hayter and binds with Roger Gilbert-Lecomte.

In 1940, it directs with Rene Magritte the review the collective invention (two numbers, in which take part in particular Chavée, Lecomte, Louis (Jean at that time) Scutenaire, Marcel Mariën, Fernand Dumont, André Breton, Irene Hamoir), then leaves Paris for Carcassonne with Scutenaire and Irene Hamoir. He lives then between Paris and Brussels, where he makes in 1941 his last exposure, prefaced by Paul Nougé, of photographs, quickly closed on order of the occupants. Having become acquainted with the poet Jean Lescure who directs it, he collaborates actively in the review Messages , where he meets Éluard, Queneau and André Frénaud, which will not cease accompanying its work in a friendly way. In 1942, it illustrates Exercice of the purity of Jean Lescure, then gives up photography in 1945.

Although he collaborates in the activities of the surrealist group the Hand with feather until 1943, the war gradually moves away it from surrealism: it starts as of 1939 to draw with the feather “the simplest objects”, glasses and bottles, fruits and breads, scissors or knives posed on a table (exposure in 1943 the Parisian bookstore of Francis Dasté prefaced by Jean Lescure). In 1946, it collects in Haute-Savoie a glare of Ardoise and starts with a nail to engrave it, carries out gouaches on the topic of the Têtes . Jean Lescure having made known to him nonfigurative Bazaine and his friends, their research on the forms and the colors help it, says it, “to make the effort tackle these problems without passing by the phantasms” of which it had been tributary. Raoul Ubac approaches painting again, with egg, for a nonfigurative series of Personnages lying in deaf lights. Starting from 1951, the gallery Aimé Maeght regularly exposes his gouaches and its fabrics, prefaced by André Frénaud, Georges Limbour, Claude Esteban or Yves Bonnefoy. Ubac simultaneously does not cease engraving slates which become with measurement of the reliefs and of which it introduces into 1955 of the fragments into its tables.

In the years 1960, its paintings, on panels covered with amalgamated resins, carry out a synthesis and a blooming, around the topics of the Labors and the Sillons , the Corps and the Torses , of the double work which it will pousuivra until its death in 1985.

Raoul Ubac made out of slate several reliefs, high reliefs and decorations mural for public edifices and deprived. One also owes him several whole of Vitraux, in particular, in 1961, for the church of Varengeville-on-Sea (in collaboration with Georges Braque) and, in 1967, the vault of the Maeght Foundation to Saint-Paul de Vence, of the mosaic S and of the Tapisserie S. It illustrated its drawings, Gravure S and Lithographie S about thirty books: Andre Frénaud, Yves Bonnefoy, Christian Dotremont, Lucien Scheler, Claude Esteban, Jacques Dupin. He is also the author of the cover of the review Argile published at Maeght of 1973 to 1981.

Works of Ubac are presented in many museums of France and Europe. In 1980, the French Post offices emitted a stamp reproducing one of its tables. Ubac belongs to the painters brought together for the exposure the lyrical flight, Paris 1945-1956, presented to the museum of Luxembourg (Sénat), in April - August 2006 ( Without title , 1947): {{ISBN|8876246797}}.

Selective bibliography

Ubac, texts of Jean Bazaine, Yves Bonnefoy, Paul Eluard, Andre Frénaud, Jean Attic, Jean Lescure, Georges Limbour, Paul Nougé, Jean Pfeiffer, Michel Ragon, Rene de Solier, Raoul Ubac and Pierre Volboudt , Maeght Editor, 1970.
Claude Esteban, Ubac , Maeght, coll Files, 1978.
Rene Magritte and surrealism in Belgium , Royal Museums of the Art schools of Belgium, Brussels, 1982.
Andre Frénaud, Ubac and bases of its art , Adrien Maeght Editor, 1985.
Lydia Harambourg, Raoul Ubac , in the School of Paris 1945-1965, Dictionary of the painters , Neuchâtel, Ides and Calendes, 1993.
Christian Bouqueret, Raoul Ubac photographer , Paris, Editions Leo Scheer, 2000.
Christian Nicaise, Raoul Ubac, Notes for a biography , Rouen, the perpetual Moment, August 2006.
Christian Nicaise, Raoul Ubac, books illustrated , Rouen, the perpetual Moment, August 2006.

Judgment

; Christian Nicaise

I pay homage to that which continues to divide into sheets in its night the stone book that the nature tightens to him, splendid Ubac in its native forest, which unceasingly scans blue slate of its Ardennes, schists of its Fagnes, opening as by enchantment, " by a dry blow given on its tranche" , the famous stone book to the thousands of pages, always marrying its lines of cleavage, making mine let itself lead - " cleavage assigns with material its limits (...) at every moment the slate tends to find its horizontality primitive" - but always learning the lesson from this surprising head with head, preserving on very light papers the prints of the subtle landscapes that it will have met, especially pushing back always further the constraint first, cutting the plans according to new angles, rectifying the primitive horizontality of a slate flagstone, teaching to him the verticality of the trees and the men, setting it up, bandaging it, large Stele topic of the tree or small stele of Nancy, all with the attack of the sky, going and leading us to essence in his nudity, signs of the Presence in its perpetual moment.

Internal bonds

External bonds

Ubac in the National museums (Joconde bases)
Collection of the National museum of modern art Center Georges Pompidou (to seek: Ubac)
Photographs of the site of the Meeting of the National museums (35 images)
Ubac in the gallery Bernard Bouche

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