Roland MICHENET (1945-1974) - Lot 138

Roland MICHENET (1945-1974) Untitled, circa 1967 Mixed media, gouache and ink on paper. 48.5 x 36.5 cm PROVENANCE: Daniel Cordier (according to a handwritten label on the back). Roland Michenet was born in Paris on June 17, 1945, and trained at the École des Arts Décoratifs and the École des Métiers d'Arts. where he learned stained glass. In 1967, he exhibited at the Karl Flinker gallery in Paris, and in 1968 at the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence; His work was also shown in New York in 1969 at the Cordier-Ekström Gallery. He died prematurely in 1974 at the age of 29. Although little known (a few of his works are included in the Daniel Cordier Donations), his work is nonetheless fundamental to the pivotal period between the late 1960s and early 1970s. Using a technique and approaching a pop aesthetic, his creations are nonetheless detached from this trend, They don't use everyday subjects. In Michenet's work, it's the private order that dominates, the obsessive, dramatic intimacy that comes to the fore, The viewer is cast in the role of voyeur. His compositions, complex assemblages borrowing from the frames of photography, the points of view of cinema and the ancestral technique of stained glass, make him a contemporary image-maker of rare relevance that it seems high time to rediscover.