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Alechinsky: Paintings and Writings
Pierre Alechinsky; Eugène Ionesco
Alechinsky: Paintings and Writings is the catalog of Pierre Alechinsky's first major American retrospective, mounted by the Museum of Art at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1977. Alechinsky, the Belgian painter who emerged from the postwar CoBrA group, works in a restless, calligraphic idiom—swarming lines, bordered “marginal” imagery, ink and acrylic on paper laid down on canvas—shaped as much by Eastern brushwork as by European Surrealism. The catalog pairs generous color and black-and-white plates with the artist's own writings and three essays by the playwright Eugène Ionesco, a friend and admirer. It's both an exhibition record and an intimate portrait of a sensibility. The show itself became famous for a young visitor it electrified—the nineteen-year-old Keith Haring. For anyone drawn to postwar European painting, CoBrA, or the meeting of image and word, it's a rich document of a singular artist at midcareer.
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The artist
Pierre Alechinsky (b. 1927) is a Belgian painter and printmaker, a key member of the CoBrA movement of the late 1940s and one of Europe's most inventive postwar artists. His gestural, calligraphic style bridges Surrealist automatism and East Asian brush painting.
The book
Published by the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute in 1977, this is the catalog of Alechinsky's first major U.S. retrospective, part of the Pittsburgh International series. It gathers 51 color and more than 200 black-and-white plates with the artist's own writings and three essays ("Three Approaches") by Eugène Ionesco.
How to read it
As both catalog and self-portrait. The interplay of Alechinsky's images and words—and Ionesco's affectionate criticism—makes it more personal than a standard museum publication.
For more context
Read alongside histories of the CoBrA group and the work of Alechinsky's fellow members Karel Appel and Asger Jorn.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Pierre Alechinsky; Eugène Ionesco
- Publisher
- Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute
- Year
- 1977
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Art
- Location
- Maine