« It was a “true painter” ! A great painter! » The Ceysson & Bénétière gallery announced via an Instagram post the death of the artist Louis Cane on November 3, at the age of 80. A founding member of the French Supports/Surfaces movement at the end of the 1960s, he continued his plastic research, navigating freely between abstraction and figuration, from painting to sculpture, while revisiting the great classics of the history of Art. art. In 2020, the artist opened the doors of his workshops to us.
Painter, sculptor and cabinetmaker
“It’s an artist’s house, but above all a family house “, immediately clarified the wife of Louis Cane, who welcomed us on this summer morning in the garden of their vast villa, overlooking the port of Villefranche-sur-Mer. The couple had acquired this property 12 years previously, to settle there during the summer. Nicole Cane is also an artist. Its animal sculptures, goats, sheep and other geese, enliven the terrace and the surroundings of the swimming pool. Relaxed and warm, watching his grandchildren attentively, the owner of the house then joined us. In shorts and a t-shirt, his hands whitened by plaster, he came out of his double workshop, which he had built near the main residence.
The artist Louis Cane in 2020 in his studio in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, in front of his Water Lilies, a tribute to Monet, which also recall the world of Joan Mitchell. © Connaissance des Arts / Bernard Saint-Genès
The basement is dedicated to cabinetmaking – he designs pieces of furniture in precious wood veneer, made from 18th century Chinese lacquer panels – and the ground floor to sculpture. This is where the artist gives birth to a multitude of characters, essentially female, filiform or robust dancing figures. Meninesavailable in bronze or glass paste. He never makes preparatory drawings and works directly in volume. Although these three-dimensional creations occupy a large part of his time, Louis Cane nonetheless remains a painter. He has two other workshops entirely devoted to this activity. One is located a few kilometers away, in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, his hometown, and the other in Paris, in the Xe borough, where he works the rest of the year.
Louis Cane, Super Marino, 1993, painted bronze, chrome steel, 88 x 27 x 27 cm. Courtesy Ceysson and Bénétière
The painting in question
The artist settled in the capital in 1965. He then began his career, the first period of which was marked by the adventure of the Supports/Surfaces group, initiated by the painter Vincent Bioulès. After an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris in 1969, this informal movement brought together, until 1972, personalities like Claude Viallat, Noël Dolla, Bernard Pagès, Pierre Buraglio, Daniel Dezeuze, Marc Devade and Patrick Saytour. What do they have in common? Question the picture, evacuate the subject to focus on its elementary components.
Among hundreds of canvases stored in his workshop, the painter Louis Cane prepares his colors. © Connaissance des Arts / Bernard Saint-Genès
« Painting is a fact in itself and it is on its terrain that we must pose the problems. It is neither a return to the sources, nor the search for an original purity, but the simple laying bare of the pictorial elements which constitute the pictorial fact. Hence the neutrality of the works presented, their absence of lyricism and expressive depth », We could read in 1969 in the text – co-signed by Louis Cane – of the catalog of the exhibition “La Peinture en Question”, organized at the Le Havre Museum.
Louis Cane, Truly abstract painting, 2017, resin on mesh, 145 x145 cm ©A.Mole/Courtesy Ceysson & Bénétière
The man had fond memories of this time. Some of his comrades, such as Bernard Pagès and Noël Dolla, lived near Nice. He came across them from time to time. But Louis Cane preferred to live in the present. Over the years and exhibitions organized in Paris, Madrid, New York, Cologne and Stockholm, his art has continued to evolve, between painting and sculpture, abstraction and figuration. His primary concerns remained the same: the material, the color, the repetition of the pattern. But he had diversified the techniques and approaches.
“Female nudity is a marvel”
« At the moment I'm very interested in the head pattern », he affirmed while manipulating a female face in plaster. Sitting on his stool, in this workshop opening onto the terraced garden where two turtles move quietly, he puts the finishing touches on a life-size nude, on which he has been working for two years. “ It is Eve who presents herself to the world, in the most frontal way, with a slight smile. Female nudity is a marvel, there is nothing more beautiful… », he adds, with a mischievous eye.
The artist Louis Cane in his sculpture workshop in Villefranche-sur-Mer, working to refine the plaster head of a female nude. © Connaissance des Arts / Bernard Saint-Genès
Of astonishing classicism, this work was one of the key pieces of his exhibition offered at the Ceysson & Bénétière gallery, in Paris, from October 29 to December 12, 2020. Louis Cane also presented a set of paintings, recent or older, including several large Resins. « These are works whose structure is a stainless steel grid, very fine and almost invisible, onto which I pour resin, spread with a spatula. These paintings play with the material and the effects of transparency, there is something gustatory under the tangy colors. Like a treat! », he said before proposing to go to Beaulieu-sur-Mer, to discover his pictorial production more widely. The visit took place in the middle of the afternoon. Time for the artist to take a nap, and a few lengths of the pool.
3 key works by Louis Cane
From left to right: Louis Cane, Paper cutout, 1967, oil on collaged paper, 173.5 x 131.5 cm, collection of the artist; Cut-out canvas, 1971, oil on cut and folded mixed-race canvas, 338 x 190 cm, Paris, MNAM; Nativity, 2000, diptych, digital overlay and oil on canvas, 266 x 244 cm artist's collection
Playing with art history
Entering this other workshop, the vision was spectacular. Hundreds of paintings from all periods were stored there, frame to frame, carefully aligned and classified. There was a lifetime of work there, creations from the Supports/Surfaces period (Cut canvases, Stamped canvases, Glued papers…), to the most recent figurative paintings (landscapes, portraits, duets or trios of willingly erotic bathers…), including the ArchesTHE Floods or the Crucifixions from the 1980s. Without forgetting the paintings on old fabrics, and the immense Water lilies from the 1990s, inspired by Claude Monet, leaning against a long white wall. In the energy of the gesture and the brilliance of a palette dominated by symphonies of blue, green, pink and yellow, these compositions are reminiscent of the abstract universe of the American painter Joan Mitchell.
Louis Cane in 2020 putting the finishing touches to one of his paintings from the Water Lilies series, in his studio in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. © Connaissance des Arts / Bernard Saint-Genès
« For me, painting is a game and art history a motif », he specified. Louis Cane happily drew on the work of those who preceded him. A way of paying homage to the masters he admires, while desecrating them. He thus seized a still life by Édouard Manet, a bouquet of flowers which he reinterpreted and multiplied on the canvas, in the manner of Andy Warhol's screen prints. Elsewhere, a Provençal landscape evokes Paul Cézanne, and a portrait of a cardinal immediately refers to Francis Bacon's pope, itself inspired by a painting by Diego Velázquez.
Louis Cane, Abstract painting (traditional), 2006, oil on canvas, 190 x 180 cm. © Connaissance des Arts / Bernard Saint-Genès
The Beaulieu-sur-Mer workshop certainly served as a reserve, but it was above all a living, creative place. This was demonstrated in 2020 by several works in progress and a table littered with paint cans, palettes, rags and brushes. For Louis Cane painting was synonymous with pleasure. “ I have lots of projects and I work all the timehe continues. I am lucky to be able to live the life of an artist, and that makes me happy. So what else would you like me to do? »
Quickly… 2/3 of each, Louis Cane 1966-2016, Galerie Bernard Ceysson
