ARTWORK IN FOCUS: JUDIT REIGL, Homme (1968) and Expérience d’Apesanteur (1964)

2 - 8 December 2020

JUDIT REIGL, Homme (1968)
Judit REIGL

1923 - 2020

Homme, 1968

Oil on canvas
Inscribed on the back: REIGL 1968 serie "HOMME"
Signed and dated on the back, lower right: Reigl 1968

252 x 208.5 x 4 cm
99 ¼ x 82 ⅛ x 1 ⅝ in

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JUDIT REIGL, EXPÉRIENCE D'APESANTEUR (1964)
Judit REIGL

1923 - 2020

Expérience d’Apesanteur, 1964

Oil and tempera on canvas
Signed and dated twice on back: 'Reigl 1964'
Inscribed on back: 'Expérience d'Apesanteur'

Inscribed on stretcher: 'EX_1964_'

116 x 90 cm
45 ⅝ x 35 ⅜ in

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Judit Reigl is considered to be one of the most remarkable Hungarian artists of the last century. Her artistic concerns lead her to develop a unique pictorial style which lies at the crossroads between abstraction, automatism and action painting.
After an exordium among the Surrealists, Judit Reigl moved away from the dream-like connotations that had characterised her early work. The series entitled Ecriture en Masse (1958 - 1965) translates to English as 'Mass Writing', and marks the beginning of this period of change for the artist. The series was developed to emulate the technique of 'automatic writing', a process that was popular among the Surrealists, in which written words or marks are produced without conscious intention.
Ecriture en Masse shows the development of Reigl's pictorial language into a more spontaneous style, embracing a dynamic and energetic approach which shifted towards the lexicon of 'action painting'. During her sessions, Reigl would sometimes paint on canvas that was laid directly on the floor. She would consider the brush as an extension of both her body and her stream of consciousness, and the act of painting became an 'automatic' practice, which was sometimes performed to music.

Expérience d'Apesanteur (1964) is a key piece in the artist's production, and is part of a sub-series of works with the same title (that can be translated to ‘Weightlessness’), marking the end of the Ecriture en Masse period. The title of this work, if translated literally, is 'the experience of the absence of weight'. This series marks a turning point in Reigl's production, with the artist using and experimenting with different materials, including tempera, oil, acrylic and latex.
This tendency towards abstraction in Reigl’s practice remained predominant until the end of the 1960s, when figurative traits started to emerge autonomously from the artist’s canvases. Around 1966, anthropomorphic shapes materialised, slowly imposing their presence. These new pictorial structures remain the core of what constitutes the series, Homme (1966 – 1972), a body of work which depicts sections of the human body in an almost purely figurative manner.

The work, Homme (1968), titled after the series, portrays the muscular strength of a male torso. The bright orange of the torso in conjunction with the thickness of the black brush strokes delineating its frame imposes a dominant presence on the viewer. The same rapid and controlled dark brushstrokes convey dynamism, as if the body was in motion or even free falling. As in other works belonging to this series, the nudity and anatomy of the human body became key for the artist in developing her research into automatism and the possibilities of intersecting abstraction and figuration.
This work is included in the exhibition Nude, which is on view until 22 January 2021. The exhibition includes works by Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Marlene Dumas, Jean Fautrier, Lucian Freud, Henri Laurens, Baltasar Lobo, Maximilien Luce, Roberto Matta, Henry Moore, Grayson Perry, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Judit Reigl and Kees Van Dongen.

Find out more about the exhibition here.

If you would like to book a visit, please call: +44 (0)20 3621 2730 or email: visit@oliviermalingue.com
Biography

Born in Hungary in 1923, Judit Reigl studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest between 1941 and 1945, and explored the painting of the old Italian masters during her trips to Italy during those same years. In 1950 she clandestinely left her home country to escape the ascent of Stalinism and reached Paris, where she met the painter Simon Hantaï. He introduced Reigl to André Breton, who organised her first solo exhibition in 1954. After this first association with the Surrealists, Reigl detached herself from the movement and started experimenting with what could be defined as an ‘’action painting approach”.

Reigl's paintings are included in the following collections: Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Musée de Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, Tate Modern, London, The Albertina, Vienna, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Art, Boston, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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ARTWORK IN FOCUS: JUDIT REIGL, Homme (1968) and Expérience d’Apesanteur (1964)

JUDIT REIGL, Homme (1968)

JUDIT REIGL, EXPÉRIENCE D'APESANTEUR (1964)

Judit Reigl is considered to be one of the most remarkable Hungarian artists of the last century. Her artistic concerns lead her to develop a unique pictorial style which lies at the crossroads between abstraction, automatism and action painting.

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