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 that 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 1964–1965 profoundly marks his painting, nourished by pre-Hispanic cultures. In North America, he then discovers the New York School, from Pollock to Rothko.

Having settled in Paris in 1967, he, with Saytour and Viallat, laid the foundations of Supports/Surfaces, leading a radical reflection on the future of painting. This questioning of the traditional structure of the painting drives him to concentrate his work on the support itself. He then undertakes a deconstruction of the canvas conceived as an object, asserting the materiality of the works and the primacy of the creative process.

Dezeuze leaves the group in 1972 and pursues a personal research focused on the construction of the painting, the fragility of materials, the economy of means, and ongoing experimentation.

Twenty recent works join the Musée d’Art Moderne’s collections, an acquisition that allows tracing his career since 1982. They testify to his taste for reuse (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 permeate and nourish his entire work over the last forty years.