Daniel Dezeuze

The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris maintains, through its history, a privileged link with the group Supports/Surfaces, which it first presented under this name at the ARC in 1970. Among its founders, Daniel Dezeuze (born 1942) occupies a decisive place. The son of painter Georges Dezeuze (1905–2004), he freely attended the Beaux-Arts courses in Montpellier, where he met Arnal, Bioulès, Grand, Rouan, and Viallat. His stay in Mexico in 1964–65 profoundly marked his painting, nourished by pre-Hispanic cultures. In North America he later discovered the New York School, from Pollock to Rothko. Settled in Paris in 1967, he, with Saytour and Viallat, laid the foundations of Supports/Surfaces, pursuing a radical reflection on the future of painting. This questioning of the traditional structure of the painting leads him to concentrate his work on the support itself. He then undertakes a genuine deconstruction of the canvas viewed as an object, affirming the materiality of the works and the primacy of the creative process. Dezeuze left the group in 1972 and continued a personal research centered on the construction of the painting, the fragility of materials, the economy of means, and ongoing experimentation. Twenty recent works are now joining the collections of the Musée d’Art Moderne, an exceptional acquisition that allows us to trace his trajectory since 1982. They bear witness to his fondness for re-use (doors, panels, skis), for assemblage, for the color that generates forms, and for the importance of emptiness. References to the history of art (Mondrian), to the Middle Ages, to Mesoamerican cultures, or to calligraphy run through and nourish all of his work over the last forty years.