Bernard Frize is a French abstract painter who lives and works in France and Germany. Since the late 1970s, and during the period when many artists and critics spoke of the 'death of painting', Frize has been producing a body of work that reduces painting to its most pure essence: the application of colour and paint on a support.
Read MoreAs the artist said in a 2019 interview with Mousse Magazine: 'For me, painting has always been a place for developing ideas and reflecting on the history of art and images'. While his work was slow to receive critical recognition, Frize gave painting a new impulse and influenced a younger generation of artists. His works have been exhibited in Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); S.M.A.K Museum, Belgium; and Gemeente Museum Den Haag, Netherlands, in 2002. In addition, he participated in the 11th Sydney Biennale (1998); the 51st Venice Biennale (2005); and the 30th São Paulo Biennial (2012).
Frize's paintings use lines in abstractions that show surprising complexity in terms of colour, facture, width, and intersection, stretching the definition of line. The artist employs different techniques and tools to apply paint to the canvas—from wide brushstrokes to more precise and rigid lines—to create colourful and diverse abstract patterns. While his paintings often begin as a grid on paper or canvas, they will not always retain the original sketch; the resulting compositions in Frize's paintings and prints reveal a tension between order and accident.
Bernard Frize was born in Saint-Mandé, France in 1949 and studied at the École des beaux-Arts in Montpellier National Art School.
Ocula | 2020
