The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris pays tribute to Jean Cortot (1925-2018) tracing the artist’s path from his abstract cities of the 1950s through to the "painted writings" he worked on until his death in 2018.

 

A music lover and passionate reader, Cortot has steadily tapped into the works of poets and writers he admired: "It's the genius of texts that gives me the desire to paint," he explained. This love of writing translates into its canvases that host, from the 1960s, enigmatic and indeciprable signs. In the following decades appear words, fragments of poems and other quotes, retranscribed in varied typographies. The exhibition at the MAM presents this progressive evolution towards the more literary, while testifying to the material richness of the work of Cortot - his textural effects, his atmospheric illustrations and his intricately orchestrated compositions.

Curator: Charlotte Barat