Horst Egon KALINOWSKI (1924-2013) - Lot 119

Horst Egon KALINOWSKI (1924-2013) Untitled, 1958 Collage of textile elements, paper and aluminum foil and burns on red paper, signed and dated upper right. 49.5 x 65 cm PROVENANCE: DBC [Daniel Bouyjou-Cordier] collection (handwritten note and inventory number on back). Horst Egon KALINOWSKI (1924-2013), born in Düsseldorf in 1924, came to Paris in 1950 and continued his training at La Grande Chaumière, in Jean Dewasne's abstract art studio. A genius at collage, with a rigorous selection of materials and an extremely meticulous technique, Kalinowski first excelled in works on paper. Daniel Cordier, who exhibited his work in his gallery from 1958, was his greatest supporter. The Tableaux-objets, "Bildschreine" or Tableaux-châsses, the culmination of his early work, take shape by completely invading the canvas surface with extra-pictorial materials. The caissons or crates extend this approach into the field of sculpture, often monumental, where the voluptuousness of the materials - leather being the preferred material - achieves a strange balance between the sacred and the profane. This approach is justified by the artist's desire for "something much more tactile... a material that can be the vehicle of my emotions". This champion of misappropriation, using the most trivial of salvaged objects, is a marvellous artist with a fascinating sensuality, often hiding behind the apparent static serenity of his poem-objects a more underlying evocation of dreamlike symbolism and disconcerting magic.