ZHONG CHENG

French painter Georges Mathieu is considered the fathers of Lyrical Abstraction. In 1942, he began his artistic career as a self-taught painter. In 1947, he moved to Paris and together with Camille Bryen and other artists they organized “L’imaginaire” at Galerie du Luxembourg to promote Lyrical Abstraction. In 1948, he developed a calligraphic gestural style in association to Tachism. In 1950, Mathieu created large scale oil paintings with a single color as base, the composition consists of amorphous shapes. Mathieu often squeezed paint directly from tubes onto the canvas and emphasized the necessity of rapid execution in order to harness an intuitive expression. In 1956, he painted “A Tribute to All Poets of the World” for the So Paulo exhibition in Museu de arte Moderna. In 1957, he exhibited in Tokyo, in the few short opening days, he completed several large scale paintings, similar to a performance he executed large canvases before audiences while dressed in costume. The main colors in his works are blue, red, white and black. Many of his titles refer to battles or other events in French history.