Cane, Louis

Biography

Louis Cane is a contemporary French painter and sculptor, born on December 13, 1943 in Beaulieu-sur-mer (Alpes-Maritimes). From 1961, he trained at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Nice, then in Paris. From his earliest works, he questioned art: in 1967-1968 at the Hall des Remises en Question, he presented a canvas covered over its entire surface with a stamp marked "Louis Cane artiste peintre". In 1970, his formal experimentation led him to join the Supports/Surfaces group, a group of artists who questioned the concept of the work of art by taking it out of the stretched canvas. Louis Cane diversifies materials and spaces: plastic, wire mesh, wood... He composes on earth, rocks and the urban environment. 1971 was an important year in Louis Cane's life and work. It was the year in which the magazine, Painting, theoretical notebooksof which Cane was one of the founders. At the same time, he held his first solo exhibitions in Paris (at Galerie Daniel Templon and Galerie Yvon Lambert) and took part in the second and third exhibitions of the Supports/Surfaces group, at a time of growing divergence within the group.. For several years, Cane remained a painter of abstraction: from the series of frameless canvases of 1970, spread out on the floor, then spray-painted and folded in half before being cut out and stapled directly to the wall, he moved on to the Sol/Mur series of 1974-1975: black canvases saturated with spray-painted color. But in the years that followed, his work was marked by the influence of his travels. From 1973 to 1978, he spent a great deal of time in Italy, observing Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican and studying classical painting, particularly that of Cimabue and Giotto. He continued his abstract series until 1975, but his work gradually returned to figuration. Indeed, around 1975-1976, his painting became semi-abstract, thanks to reinterpretations of great masterpieces. Menines. In 1977, he was included in the exhibition "L'avant-garde 1960-1976: trois villes, trois collections", which featured most of the artists of the Supports/Surfaces movement. In 1978, Cane made an even more marked return to figuration. His analysis of the history of pictorial forms led him to revisit emblematic figures such as Annunciations, Lunches on the Grass, Disembowelments, Crucifixions... through bold painting tinged with irony. At the same time, he began to devote himself in earnest to sculpture, which had been present in the background since his apprenticeship. By the 1970s, the rigor of his artistic approach had made him an artist of growing renown. His works are regularly exhibited in many countries, and travel to the most prestigious venues: Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Château de Chambord, Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art, Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, exhibition The Supports/Surfaces spirit at the Shaanxi History Museum in Xi'an, China. Throughout his life, Cane has reinvented supports, materials and aesthetics. In recent years, furniture design, which has been part of his training since his studies at the École des Arts Décoratifs, has become an important part of his work. The prints offered by Galerie Arenthon bear witness to his formal explorations, through the reinterpretation of traditional themes, notably that of the crucifixion, a resolutely modern, lively line and an often monochrome palette, which blurs the boundaries between abstract and figurative.