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Claude Viseux

"I invent spiritualized structures. I am a transformatist of reality."

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Notes of biography

Claude Viseux is born in 1927 in Champagne-sur-Oise. He is a student on architecture at the School of Fine Arts in Paris, from 1946 to 1949. He meets the architect Jean Prouvé in 1951, then the sculptor Brancusi next year. Until 1958, Claude Viseux essentially works as a painter. He is now seen in the lyrical abstraction, doing also a work area similar to the informal art.
His first exhibition is held in the Vibaud gallery (Paris) in 1952). In 1953, he starts in instrumental painting from gambling equipment and his first assemblies in cement and various metals. The activity of the artist is first of a follower of the theory of the practice of all the arts experienced as an adventure. The artist abandons painting in 1958.
In 1959, Viseux starts carving sculpture with “active structures” stainless steel and works from mechanical piece borrowed from the industrial world; he works polished steel, prefabricated parts assembled into large three-dimensional compositions. His assemblages of parts used for their functionality, crushing and other combinations, experience real metamorphosis. His interest in monumental art reflects his desire to be free of market constraints. Claude Viseux plays with forms, moving signs, gives birth to new energy. The artist turns reality, proposing a new relationship between geometry and the organic, between the permeable and impermeable, between reality and dream.
Speaking of his research, the artist uses a metaphorical vocabulary: germination, hybridization and fertilization.
Among his many exhibitions, personal or collective, we note those hold at the Castelli Gallery (New York, 1957), the CNAC (1969) in the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennial (1972), and the Modern Art Museum of the Paris (1977). He has often exhibited abroad, including India, for which he develops a passion from 1982 and a first invitation to New Delhi by the Indian government.
Along with his life as a sculptor, Claude Viseux focuses on expressions reserved to the world of graphics art (lithographs, etchings, screen prints). As in other aspects of his creation, Claude Viseux plays with forms, moving signs, gives birth to new energy.
Claude Viseux is a teacher, foreman at the National Superior School of Fine Arts from 1975 to 1992.
Claude Viseux belongs to the generation of major sculptors of the second half of the twentieth century, which, like Cesar, Feraud and Jean Tinguely have opted for metal. He realizes many architectural integrations (Berlin, Orly airport, Boulogne Cambrai, Mont-de-Marsan, Grenoble, etc.). Artist "nomad" as he defined himself, he goes through the decades, alongside the greatest of musicians, architects, poets, painters and sculptors of course.
Claude Viseux spends the last 10 years of his life in Anglet; ill, he dies at the end of 2008.

Artists on display

The art and the artists display: proclamations, galleries, museums, personal or collective exhibitions. On walls or in shop windows, wise or rebels, posters warn, argue, show. Some were specially conceived by an artist for such or such event, other, colder, have only the letter.

Some were created in lithographic technic, most are simple offset reproductions. They are many those who like collecting these rectangles of paper, monochrome or in games of colours, in matt paper or brilliant, with many words or almost dumb.

We are happy also to be able to greet, by this pages, mythical galleries as those of Denise René, Louis Carré, Claude Bernard, Berheim Jeune, Maeght, Pierre Loeb and others.

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Complete work(s)

Complete work(s)
Non réalisé à ce jour. All the complete works

Bibliographic track and more

To read about the artist :
  • « Claude Viseux », Maurice Nadeau, in revue Cimaise n°78, nov.-déc. 1966
  • « Claude Viseux », G. Picon et autres, CNAC, Paris, 1969
  • « Viseux. Sculptures, lithographies imaginales», Galerie Chave, Vence, 1971
  • « Claude Viseux », François Mathey, Ed. Collection Prisme, Paris, 1975
  • « La sculpture moderne en France depuis 1950 », Ionel Jianou et autres, Ed. Arted, 1982
  • « Les annes fertiles », G. Bonnefoi, Ed. Mouvements, 1988
  • « L'Ecole de Paris (1945-1965) », L. Harambourg, Ed. Ides et Calendes, 1993
  • « La cavée » (écrits de l'artiste), Ed. Séguier-Atlantica, Biarritz, 2000
  • « Les sculpteurs de métal », Dominique Dalemont, Ed. Somogy, 2006
  • « La collection de Beaulieu », G. Bonnefoi, Ass. cult. de l'abbaye de Beaulieu, 2007
To read from the artist :
  • « Nutations », collection Ecrits d'artiste, Ed. Snsba, Paris, 1992
  • « Récit autobiographique », D. Arnaudet, B. Decron et C. Viseux, Ed. Somogy, 2009
Website :
No website dedicated to the artist.

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Art movements

+ MODERN SCULPTURE / 1930-1970 / William Kenneth Armiage, Constantin Brancusi, Anthony Caro, Naum Gabo, Pablo Gargallo, Isamu Noguchi, etc.
All art movements

See & discover

Beyond works currently in stock, it seemed to me useful to combine business with pleasure by letting you discover others works by artists in my gallery. These artworks, now sold or removed from our website, have been in our stock in the past.

These pages will undoubtedly make it possible for some of you to associate an image with its title or the other way round, for others it will be a good time to discover more on such and such artist. For the sake of confidentiality – the pieces being no longer available – we won't display neither their numbering or their price. For whatever reason, make sure to visit this amazing art database with to date 6441 online works just for your pleasure! Michelle Champetier

See & discover