Galerie Paul Prouté

André Marfaing arrived in Paris in 1949 with the intention of studying painting, but abandoned figurative art as early as 1952. Decisive encounters with the works of Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages led him very early on toward harmonies of white, black, and gray that had no other purpose than the emergence of light. Whether painted, engraved, or drawn, Marfaing’s work can be interpreted as an ongoing exploration of simplification. Thus, his early rough, impasto-laden canvases were succeeded in the early 1960s by drawings and prints that were still dense but in which light began to appear in flashes. While the line would gradually continue to be stripped down, it was not until the 1970s—though without a sudden break—that it was replaced by large expanses of black, the gaps between which would increasingly allow light to shine through. His final works from the 1980s would finally mark the definitive triumph of an omnipresent white, broken only by a few black stripes.