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THE HORNED WOMAN (untitled) - Gérad Di-Maccio
SURVIVOR - Roland Cat
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PARIS - FALL 2004
PART I (31 pages)
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Visually stunning, technically perfect, transcending the imagination - for over fifty years now, a group of artists in France have been creating a vast body of original work. Their contribution to French culture has been enormous - and yet these artists lead a marginal existence.
Ignored by the media, shunned by state institutions for the arts, generally despised as 'counter-Modernist' - their works cannot be found in any article, book or exhibition on 'Art of the 20th Century'. And yet, to a discerning group of gallerists, patrons and collectors, their names are legend: Henricot, Verlinde, Di-Maccio, Cat, Poumeyrol, Kandl, Peyrolle...
Since arriving in Paris seven years ago, I have made every effort to become acquainted with the French contribution to international Visionary art. The images that have gradually unfolded before my eyes have manifest, above all, an independence of vision combined with a sureness of technique.
Visionary art in France, if not a movement, is certainly a recognizable trend in contemporary painting. Though marginal, its existence in Paris can undeniaby be felt; its style is manifest in many of the paintings presently hanging in galleries or appearing in posters on café windows.
To characterize this 'post-surrealist' phenomenon, a number of expressions have arisen in the French language: l'art onirique, l'art phantastique, l'art imaginaire, le réalisme fantastique, les marginaires and, above all, l'art visionnaire.
And so our interest - for the present - is the city of Paris, and French-speaking culture as a whole. The time is the start of the twenty-first century, with its turning away from Modernism to embrace new perspectives and modes of perception. The artists who concern us are les Visionnaires.
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