Galerie Paul Prouté

The titles of many of the artist's works echo the theme of the ocean and the marine world. It must be said that Geneviève Asse grew up in the Gulf of Morbihan until she was eleven. Thereafter, she lived and worked between Paris and Ile aux Moines, where she had acquired a house in 1987. Her first paintings date from 1942, when she was a student at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Starting with still lifes - Geneviève Asse was particularly influenced by the Chardin paintings in the Louvre - she then came to abstraction, in contact with André Lanskoy, Serge Poliakoff, Serge Charchoune, Nicolas de Staël, Geer and Bram van Velde. Geneviève Asse is also an engraver. Her first engravings date back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, as does her meeting with Giorgio Morandi in 1961. Translating in images poems by Yves Bonnefoy or Silvia Baron Supervielle, texts by Samuel Beckett or Pierre Lecuire, she accompanied their books with her engravings. She was also a friend of Jean Leymarie. Two of the main stylistic characteristics of her work are the use of the line and the use of blue. The line that structures, that separates, that opens, that gives the illusion of depth; the pure line, "acute" according to her words. The blue, both color and language; her blue, which reveals the infinite dimension of space and time. The alliance of the line and the cerulean color are then there to translate, like a "secret architecture", the stripping in the light. It seems that, for the artist, the real thing is where we do not see it, and this, despite the choice of titles that directly allude to the sensible world. Certainly, one can say that the ascetic character of his work allows a feeling of plenitude to shine through.