Pierre Alechinsky

b. Bruxelles 1927

The Balance of Opposites

The Belgian graphic artist and painter Pierre Alechinsky (b. 1927) had three intense years with the group of the far more experienced CoBrA artists. He joined the CoBrA as a mere 22-year-old artist who had yet to formulate an idiom of his own. He was therefore probably also the artist on whom CoBrA had the greatest formal impact. Alechinsky was particularly absorbed by the theories and the thinking surrounding the group’s joint artistic work and in the publication of the group’s most important mouthpiece – the CoBrA journal. 

WORKS OF ART WITH THE MYSTICISM OF THE EAST
His training as a book illustrator and typographer from the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels is very much apparent throughout Alechinsky’s oeuvre. Another consistent artistic trait is rooted in his in-depth knowledge of Eastern culture and calligraphy from his time as a correspondent for the Japanese newspaper Bukobi in Paris in the 1950s. For Alechinsky, art became a fine balancing of opposites. Alechinsky’s paintings are therefore also primarily painted in acrylics due to the flexibility of the material rather than the heavier oil-based paint.

CENTRE POMPIDOU, MUSEUM OF MODERN ART AND TATE GALLERY
It is easy to be taken with Alechinsky’s art, and his ideas about the essence of art have resonated internationally. In 1983 he became an art professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He remains active behind the canvas today and is rightly considered one of the most influential living artists in Europe. Alechinsky is also represented at the world’s biggest museums – from the Centre Pompidou in Paris to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate Gallery in London. His paintings and lithographs are always highly sought after at auctions.

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