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Eureka V

1999

Bonnefoi Christian

Painting

200 x 180 cm

Acrylique on canvas

The artist began the Eureka series at the start of the 1980s, continuing to present day with Eureka VIII. Curves, spirals and waves give these works their stark graphical appearance. The colourful, tangled snake-like forms intertwine and overlap, bringing with them a definitive, chromatic richness that is unexpected from an artist whose approach is so strict and precise.

In Eureka V, colours are added and saturated; exhilarating colours are interlaced and stand out against a solid background, bringing them to the fore. The “method”, or Bonnefoi’s approach, creates a visual tie between different eras. Whether gestural, brimming with colour, exuberant like Eureka, or in keeping with minimal movement like Ja na pas, his paintings strike a balance in a constant flow between material, media, and stretching the surface to allow the “emergence of the visible”.

Bonnefoi Christian

France

Born in 1948

Born in Salindre (Gard), France
Lives and works in Paris.

Christian Bonnefoi stands outside the trend, working in the margin to create a clean, pictorial space and an enticingly abstract code. After a degree in Social Sciences from EPHE (Ecole pratique des hautes etudes, Paris), a PhD in Art History from the Sorbonne, and with numerous publications, articles, interviews and erudite studies in art history to his name, Christian Bonnefoi went on to develop a conceptual approach. Founded on both theory and technique, it offers a new view on a painting’s emergence by working from the surface. Studies of the Russian Constructivists and cubist collages offer the foundation of his theoretical approach, for he believes that everything begins with collage. Christian Bonnefoi is first and foremost a theorist, and then a painter, his paintings continuing the theme of his reflections.

He creates his work according to a succession of complex operations that include gesture, material, collage, drying time, the repetition of certain steps, and stretching the canvas. However, he immediately destroys anything that could resemble a system. His working method relies on a constant dialogue, switching back and forth between front and back, the right side and the wrong side, within a spatial paradox that favours the layout rather than the surface.