- Artist
- Henri Michaux 1899–1984
- Medium
- Ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Support: 746 × 1099 mm
frame: 780 × 1128 × 40 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1963
- Reference
- T00577
Catalogue entry
Henri Michaux born 1899 [- 1984]
T00577 Untitled India Ink Drawing
1961
Inscribed 'HM' (monogram) b.r. and on back 'Henri Michaux | Encre 108 x 75 | 1961 | #44200 | 0012'
India ink on paper, 29 3/4 x 43 1/4 (74.5 x 110)
Purchased from the Galerie Daniel Cordier through the Robert Fraser Gallery (Grant-in-Aid) 1963
Prov:
With Galerie Daniel Cordier, Paris (purchased from the artist)
Exh:
Henri Michaux: Oeuvres Récentes 1959-1962, Galerie Daniel Cordier, Paris, October-November 1962 (works not listed); Henri Michaux, Robert Fraser Gallery, London, February-March 1963 (15), wrongly dated 1962
The artist confirmed in 1976 that the date 1961 inscribed on the back is correct and said he is almost certain that it was one of the works exhibited at the Galerie Daniel Cordier in October 1962.
He has commented on his works of this type: 'I try to rouse that which is not absolutely static within me and which may thus (who knows?) break out suddenly, a suddenly new and living movement. It is this movement which I insist must take place, this improvised, spontaneous movement. I should like to paint the inner ferment, not just paint with it or thanks to it ...
'Now about the blots ... They disgust me. I am never rid of them until I have made them jump, run, climb, clamber down again. In themselves they are abhorrent to me and really only blots, which tell me nothing. (I have never been able to see anything at all in a "Rorschach Test"). So I fight them, whip them, I should like to be done at once with their prostrate stupidity, galvanize them, bewilder them, exasperate them, ally them monstrously with everything that moves in the unnameable crowd of beings, of non-beings with a rage for being, to everything, insatiable desires or knots of force, which are destined never to take form, here or elsewhere.'
(This passage is taken from a short speech which Michaux made in 1959 at Frankfurt, to a group of students, and which was later printed in the catalogues of his exhibitions at the Galerie Daniel Cordier in 1959 and at the Robert Fraser Gallery).
Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.515, reproduced p.515
Explore
- abstraction(8,615)
-
- non-representational(6,161)
-
- gestural(891)
- formal qualities(12,454)
-
- spontaneity(112)