Fernandez Arman
Biography
Fernandez Arman was born in Nice on November 17, 1928 where he attended L'École des Arts decoratifs, getting acquainted with Yves Klein, of whom he became a friend and companion of raids around Europe. He then completed his studies in Paris at the École du Louvre. His first works are purely figurative and this period lasted until the end of the 1950s and then continued to include objects in his works. In fact, it was 1959 when Arman came across a drawer full of used bulbs. It is the fulguration, the beginning of a new way of painting where the object becomes a central element of the work. Arman in fact assembled the bulbs at his best and exposed them as a painting: thus the first of the "Accumulations " was born. Immediately afterwards he joined the Nouveau Réalisme group founded by the young critic Pierre Restany. In 1963 the first "Combustions" appeared. The interest in fire begins with Yves Klein and this suggestion infects numerous artists until it becomes, in particular in Bernard Aubertin, the exclusive object of the work. Combustion often affects musical instruments, mainly violins,which Arman later drowns in a fusion of plexiglas that is processed and polished into parallelepiped-shaped blocks. In the 1970s it replaced plexiglas with the cement from which the most diverse objects emerge, not just musical instruments; this is how "Cements" are born. From the 1980s onwards it begins with the series of "Fragments", that is, objects are sectioned and glued to a support, canvas or wood, and often covered with traces of painting. The objects are the most diverse, from shoes to books to musical instruments that constitute the most fascinating part of this type of works. Over the years Arman exhibited in many prestigious private galleries and museums and was also invited with a personal room to the 1976 Venice Biennale. In addition to France, Arman operates in the United States, invited to exhibit or teach, as he is at California University in Los Angeles in 1968, the year in which he participates in the Venice Biennale and Documenta di Kassel. This assiduous U.S. attendance allowed him to take his citizenship in 1972. From the mid-1980s he began to create monumental outdoor sculptures for public and private bodies that culminated in 1999 with "La Rampante", a powerful bronze casting, coated with red, of Ferrari cars, cut and superimposed, installed in front of the entrance of the Imola motor circuit. Arman died on October 22, 2005 in New York City. on the grave he engraved his mocking epitaph "At last only".
Tags: Fernandez Arman - Arman - accumulations - combustions - cements - fragmentation - Yves Klein - Nouveau Réalisme - Venice Biennale
Fernandez Arman - Nouveau Réalisme
The Nouveau Réalisme is an artistic movement founded in Paris on October 27, 1960 by Pierre Restany who brought together under this name a group of artists including Villeglé, Arman, Heins, Klein, Spoerri, Tinguely to which later Christo, Rotella and Niki de Saint-Phalle were added. The group broke into three strands. The members of what he intended to recover in artistic form the language of advertising communication were, Rotella, Villeglè, Dufréne and Deschamps. These were also called Affichisti because the most full-bodied work of these was to remove the billboards that were in the cities and paste them on canvas. Usually these artists glued on the same canvas several layers of billboards that then worked performing tears that were not random but depended on the aesthetic taste of the artist and the message that he wanted to give. Among them was particular Mimmo Rotella, who had the idea of presenting not only the visible part of the torn posters, but also the back part that adhered to the support, land or wall. This is how what he called the Retro d'Affiche were born.
