FRANCIS BOTT

At the beginning of his artistic career, from 1934, Francis Bott painted small compositions on cardboard under the artist’s name Frabo, which - often in landscape motifs - express a fantastic expressionism. From the late 1930s, his paintings are surreally coded in the manner of Max Ernst, at whose side he participates in the international Surrealist exhibition in Paris in 1947. Towards the end of World War II, the artist turned to abstraction and cultivated a symbolic pictorial language with black line meshes over color surfaces in circular and triangular forms that appear very transparent(Composition, 1939). Later, the application of paint became more impasto; Bott transformed himself into a “painter of heavy matter,” applying paint in broad cubes with a palette knife in the 1950s and 1960s. His painting now recalls French Informel, the abstract expressionism of a Nicolas de Staël. Color always plays a significant role in the composition of the painting, especially the cobalt blue and the flaming red. In the 1970s and 1980s Bott returned to Surrealism, which, however, was more reminiscent of the metaphysically charged spaces of a Giorgio de Chirico(Comme des mirroirs palpitants, 1976). Later, the pictorial structure becomes more complex; the paintings of the 1980s and 1990s often seem somewhat overloaded(Hommage à Uccello, 1980). The pictorial spaces are now constructed like theatrical backdrops, and the figures in them are surrounded by mysterious objects. Francis Botts’ interest in contemporary music is reflected in his compositions, which are often structured by rhythmic variations.