Martial Raysse
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Martial Raysse is a French Painter, born February 12 1936.
Biography
Raysse was born in a ceramists family in Vallauris and began to paint and write poetry at age 12. After studying and practising athleticism at a high level, he began to accumulate rubbish odds and ends that he preserved under plexiglas. In 1958 he exhibited at Galerie Longchamp some of his paintings with Jean Cocteau.
Fascinated by the beauty of plastic, he plundered low-costs shops with plastic items and developed what became his "vision hygiene" concept; a vision that showcases consumer society. This work received success as in 1961, 15 minutes before an opening in Milan, all of his works were sold. He then traveled to the USA to get a closer exposure to Pop Art.
Nouveaux Réalistes Activity
In October 1960, Martial Raysse, together with Arman, Yves Klein, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villeglé and the art critic and philosopher Pierre Restany founded the group Nouveaux Réalistes. The group was later joined by Cesar, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle and Christo. This group of artists defined themselves as bearing in common a "new perspective approaches of reality". Their work was an attempt at reassessing the concept of art and the artist in the context of a 20th Century consumer society by reasserting the humanistic ideals in the face of industrial expansion.
