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The estate of  Jean Miotte

Jean Miotte is one of the prominent figures of lyrical abstraction within the New School of Paris. From the outset he favored gestures and action as a means of transposing emotion, as a way of testifying to his complex relationship to sensory reality; a philosophical and spiritual experience in service of the symbolism of the image. His discourse is borne out of a semantics where he regards the sign as the “I” who paints: "I am painting" he declares. His approach tends to two extremes, on the one hand a writing at the height of thought and sensation, and jointly an exuberant spontaneity to the point of losing oneself in a Zen-like spirit. This vocation of the void was manifested especially from 1962 on, following regular stays in New York where he bonded with Rothko and Motherwell. Miotte gives praise to white that has become light, and which “radiates and erases limits”, he says. The fluid space is cut across by vigorous flat areas that extend into hemmed waves, torn to shreds in a spatial labyrinth whose complacent pitfalls it suppresses.

His painting shows a return to polychromy with a palette of pure tones, favoring the primaries whose sounds he exploits. The use of brushes, spatulas, knives, allows the effervescence of a cursive graphic design in colors with rich, vibrant, and sharp accents for a moving universe governed by contradictory and dual forces. During the seventies and eighties a new cycle centred on metamorphis began to appear. Between violence and refinement, density and transparency, fervor and revolt, Jean Miotte’s painting achieves the quivering balance of life. The rhythmic arabesque of its forms is an echo of the dance that inspires it. The unity of his language is realized in this informal lyricism which reaches a pictorial plenitude by managing to give substance to his sensations of light, to bring to light an indefinable sacredness amid the energy of living.

Jean Miotte, who exhibited in Paris with Joan Mitchell, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Sam Francis, transcends a singular and immediately recognizable body of work.

— Lydia Harambourg, Historian, Writer, Art Critic, Corresponding Member of the Institut de France, Académie des beaux-arts

  • Biography

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  • Bibliography

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Selected artworks

  • Jean Miotte, Sans titre, 2001

    Jean Miotte Sans titre, 2001

    Acrylic on canvas

    65 x 92 cm; 25 1/2 x 36 in (unframed)
    68.5 x 95 x 5 cm; 26.9 x 37.4 x 1.9 in (framed)

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  • Jean Miotte, Sans titre, 2000

    Jean Miotte Sans titre, 2000

    Acrylic on canvas

    80 x 60 cm; 31 1/2 x 23 1/2 in (unframed)
    83 x 63,5 x 4 cm; 32.7 x 25 x 1.5 in (framed)

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  • Jean Miotte, Say Yes, 2000

    Jean Miotte Say Yes, 2000

    Acrylic on canvas

    100 x 81 cm
    39 1/2 x 32 in

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  • Jean Miotte, Incendiaire, 1962

    Jean Miotte Incendiaire, 1962

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  • Jean Miotte, Untitled, 1973

    Jean Miotte Untitled, 1973

    Acrylic on canvas

    66 x 82 cm (unframed dimensions)
    26 x 32 1/2 in (unframed dimensions)

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Gallery exhibitions

Selected press