Dole. Jean-Bernard Butin: “Painting is a fight with the tool, the support and the material”

“My friends said to me: but how can you live alone in Les Forges? » has fun Jean-Bernard Butinpainter anchored in Jura landduring the presentation of the exhibition which is dedicated to his work, at the museum of Fine Arts from Dole. “I had this chance at the factory: there was silence and emptiness. I had a lot of pleasure to live there” for forty years.

“The Forges place had a huge influence on me”

“I never bothered there, alone,” insists the one who Today lives in Arbois. “And sometimes, Fanny accompanied me.” Fanny Gagliardiniwhich is also part of the landscape artistic Jura, and he also work together.

“You had to have a very large strength to live there,” she believes.

“I started by doing very large canvases » remembers the winegrower’s child, who testifies of a “huge painting of 3.5 meters. I made an easel myself. And I always worked in natural light. »

The exhibition built on the Vitality of the little

“Artist who became important in the region, it produced a substantial workwhich is still known and appreciated,” says Samuel Monier, head of the museum’s collections and exhibitions.

” We have staged this Vitality of the little: large format at the entrance, hanging starting dense and ending lighter throughout the rooms. This gives meaning to title of the exhibition“.

A piecemeal work

Samuel Cordier, curator of this exhibition which he initiated, continues: “It’s a artwork important and parcel. There is a relationship between the different workshops and the works produced by the artist during his career“. I

there are “ influences biographical, travel, discoveries, a dialogue with the work of Fanny Gagliardi, a human dimension…”

He adds that “people who own one of his creations have a fairly literal attachment to his works”.

Itinerary of a Jura artist

Jean-Bernard Butin studied the paint at the Beaux-Arts in Lyon then in Paris, and notably traveled to Morocco and Israel. “For me, the painter is Nicolas de Staël. He is touching me. I got it admired, it still brings tears to my eyes,” he emphasizes, moved. “ Pierre Soulages also, I admired him.”

“Painting is a fight with the tool, the support and the material”, testifies the one who was ” teacher at Roland College” and enjoys “using weight and material, to achieve this miracle paint “.

“I spent my time playing, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t working! »

In the first room of the museum, can admire a canvas representing the collegiate church. ” The little collegiate, she is majestic. We had to gigantism in architecture” believes the artist, who created his painting using knife technique.

“The order of technique is present by the density of matter“, points out Samuel Monier.

Culture with its territory

“The place of Forges extremely influence. When I arrived, it was a wasteland. I tried to make it a place of poetry. I had a vegetable garden there immensea painting workshop and a sculpture workshop” says Jean-Bernard Butin.

“I spent my time play but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t working! » measures the painter.

Sculpture and engraving in addition

“When I arrived at Forges (de Baudin), I saw some very beautiful stones that we didn’t do anything with. So I bought some materialbut I don’t have training of sculptor. I am painterbut not necessarily a sculptor or engraver. In engraving, which for me is a passionI can do explode the shapethat is to say not respecting word for word the technical“, notes the one who, at 92 years old, still has “neither television nor cell phone”.

And “I enjoyed doing the prints“, he who has not yet achieved much: “There are a lot of work one on one because it’s experimental“, intervenes Fanny Gagliardi, his artistic accomplice.

The exhibition is free. Located on the ground floor, it is accessible during the opening hours of the Dolois Fine Arts Museum.

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