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  3. Joe Downing

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    Biography of Joe Downing

    French-american painter Joe Downing was born in 1925 in Tompkinsville (Kentucky, United States). Inducted into the United States Army, he served in Europe during World War II. Later, he took classes at the Chicago Art Institute. The young artist lived in France in 1950 sharing his time between Paris and Ménerbes (Vaucluse), where he settled, late in the sixties. Joe Downing was one of the most authentic representatives of the abstraction « libre ». Through swarming forms,  brighter and brighter over time, he developed a personal poetics about space, rhythm and color. Joe Downing was one of the artists defended by the Galerie Arnaud in Paris. In the mood of Saint Germain des Prés, painters, gallery owners, collectors, art critics form a village, as said Joe Downing. Over the years, on his canvas he set up an incredible puzzle where the pleasure of the colorist, unrestrainedly, expresses himself. Attracted by unusual formats, Joe Downing painted on ancient doors, windows, leathers. He realized several opera and theater sets (Compagnie Lyrique de Paris, Compagnie Barrault-Renaud). In1967, the museum in Brest organizes the first retrospective show, almost fifteen years before the one arranged by Owensboro Museum of Fine Arts in Kentucky (1982). In 1976, Joe Downing created decorations on porcelain for the « Manufacture de Sèvres ». A new retrospective exhibition was arranged at the Fine arts and History Museum  in Metz in 1987. Joe Downing died in Ménerbes in 2007.

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8 work(s) available
Agrafages VII
Etching
Agrafages VI
Etching
Agrafages V
Etching
Agrafages IV
Etching
Agrafages III
Etching
Agrafages II
Etching
Agrafages I
Etching
Whale talk
Book

Catalogue(s) raisonné(s)

Catalogue(s) raisonné(s)
Not realised. All the catalogues raisonnés

Bibliographic track & more

To read from or about the artist :
* « Joe Downing - Peintures », Julien Alvard, catalogue d'exposition, Studio Paul Facchetti, Paris, 1953
* « Beauford-Delane - Joe Downing - Caroline Lee », Julien Alvard, catalogue d'exposition, Ed. Centre Culture Américain, Paris, 1961
* « Joe Downing », Marguerite Duras, Ed. Cimaise, Paris, 1963
* « Joe Downing », Pierre Seghers, Ed. Bellint, 1977
* « Joe Downing », M. Berr de Turique, catalogue d'exposition, Musée d'Art et d'Industrie, Metz, 1987
* « Joe Downing : une vie de peinture », P. Descargues et C. Bouyeure, Ed. Présence de l'Art Contemporain, Angers, 1996
* « Joe Downing - Un américain en France », Lydia Harambourg et autres, catalogue d'exposition, Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, Ed. Fage, 2010
Website :
No website dedicated to the artist.
Stamp :
No stamp made.

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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.

All the posters
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