You wish to be alarmed for any new work by this artist? Please enter your email.
Painter, engraver and sculptor Madeleine Spierer was born in 1926 in Trieste into a Swiss-Jewish family of tobacco merchants, who had previously lived in (Smyrna) Izmir in Turkey. She began drawing and painting as a child and continued to do so throughout her life; she is now 95.
With fascism on the rise in Italy, the family moved to Geneva in 1939, where the artist lived until 2014. She held her very first exhibition there in 1962 (Château de Corsinge). In 1959, gallery owner Jan...
-
Read biography ARTIST ALARM
Biography of Madeleine Spierer
Painter, engraver and sculptor Madeleine Spierer was born in 1926 in Trieste into a Swiss-Jewish family of tobacco merchants, who had previously lived in (Smyrna) Izmir in Turkey. She began drawing and painting as a child and continued to do so throughout her life; she is now 95.
With fascism on the rise in Italy, the family moved to Geneva in 1939, where the artist lived until 2014. She held her very first exhibition there in 1962 (Château de Corsinge). In 1959, gallery owner Jan Krugier and Vivette Spierer - his first wife and the artist's sister - invited Bram Van Velde to stay with them in Geneva. There, Bram met Madeleine Spierer, who shared his life until 1977; with him, she frequented the greatest artists of the 20th century.
In 2014 - she was 88 at the time - feeling a creative need for larger works - but with insufficient workspace in Geneva - she accepted an invitation from her niece, gallerist Tzila Krugier, and artist Gene Mann, and moved to La Bisbal d'Empordà in Catalonia (Spain), to occupy a space that suited her needs perfectly. This is where Madeleine Spierer lives and works today, having recently created two installations, “ Le Cosmos ‘ and ’ La Grotte ”, which are intended to be universal symbols of life and movement. From the end of the war, in 1945, the young woman made frequent visits to Paris, where she gained an insight into the art world through museum visits and encounters. In 1949, Jan Krugier took her to the galleries of the City of Light, where she discovered the painters of the post-war Ecole de Paris (Bazaine, Fernand Léger, ...). Eager to discover and learn, open to all modes of expression, this quest led her to travel throughout her life (Madrid, Oslo, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Italy), and she spent long periods in London, New York (2001-2002) and San Salvador (El Salvador; 2004).
Through the language of color and the dynamics of rhythm, Madeleine Spierer's painting aims to make visible the relationship between inner life and the outside world. “ My work is an ongoing experiment with the relationship between line and surface on the one hand, and rhythm and color on the other. The materials I find must respond precisely to the tension of developing pictorial drama. The experience of a flat surface in which color invents space is overturned by the addition of three-dimensional materials. The actual vibration of the pictorial elements is essential to the expression of dramatic interaction. I describe this in order to tell a conceptual story about the traces left in me by the various pieces of information from unknown and ever-new worlds that motivate my pictorial acts, “ says the artist.“ Neither illustration nor abstraction. It's about using pictorial means to make life itself perceptible. Painting is my way of life; the ground on which the path is paved is my own life experience ”, adds Madeleine Spierer.
Paintings, drawings, sketches, engravings, sculptures, collages, gouaches, photographs and installations - all of which marvel at the different techniques of expression - form the formidable range of Madeleine Spierer's exceptional artistic career, an artist out of the ordinary who has shaped a particular inner world. A major retrospective of her work has been organized in Girona (Spain) in 2019.
11 work(s) available
