Georges Collignon (1923-2002) - Composition

Very beautiful composition around 1955-1960, mixed media technique (paper collage, fabrics, gouache, ink...)
Provenance: private collection, Paris.

Georges Collignon was a Belgian painter, born August 26, 1923 in Flémalle-Haute, Belgium, and died February 5, 2002 in Liège.

In his first period, the artist has nervous and lively art, more structured than informal, more lyrical than geometric, and he is abstract in his own right. He interweaves colorful labyrinths that dance with joy and evoke microscopically cut shapes or aerial photographs. In the 1960s, he progressively returns to a neo-figurative, unreal imagery that celebrates the blending of figurative elements with abstract structures.

He studied with Auguste Mambour at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Liège from 1939 to 1945 and worked at the Cristalleries du Val Saint-Lambert in Seraing.

Georges Collignon begins as a figurative painter trained in the academic tradition and, during these more or less regular studies, studies surrealism and the work of René Magritte. From this period only a very small number of works survive, lost, some having been exhibited at the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Liège in 1940, notably Wheat Field and Groves, gray weather. He then moves toward non-figurative painting.

After these beginnings, he conducts color research and paints his first abstract canvases starting in 1945. He participates in the activities of the Apport group and becomes a member of Jeune Peinture Belge from 1946.

First period: Abstract Art: 1946-1967
Collignon participates in the Cobra movement and in 1950, he creates with Pol Bury the Réalité-Cobra group, the first Belgian group for the defense of abstract art.

He shares with Pierre Alechinsky and Jean Dubosq the Jeune Peinture Belge prize awarded for the first time in 1950.

A French government fellow, he settled in Paris in 1951 and remained there until 1968. He was a founding member of the group Art abstrait in 1952 and a recipient of the Hélène Jacquet Prize.

Initially, small spots of bright colors are juxtaposed and cover the entire surface of the canvas without aiming to create an apparent structure. But gradually, as in the works of Estève and his friend Magnelli, they widen and organize themselves according to lines of force for the benefit of vigorous rhythms, curvilinear movements, and galactic whirlwinds that energize space in refined partitions.

Flat areas, executed with a nervous and lively brushwork, render the pictorial surface intense and vibrant. Long diagonal curves cross and re-cross, traversing the canvas. Collignon creates a “topographic” painting in works that seem inspired by aerial views of gardens, fields in bloom, junctions, and crossroads.

He participates in the E.G.A.U. architectural group and creates a few bas-reliefs or concrete integrations for the University of Liège (Belgium) at Sart-Timan, where the buildings of the Droixhe plain (Liège, Belgium) stand.

From 1958, he takes up paper and fabric collages, made in the manner of Cubist papier collé.

He obtains one of the Marzotto prizes in 1960. In 1961, he exhibited at the Salon de Mai and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles.

From 1964, more and more figurative elements appear in his work, integrating with the abstract forms that gradually fade.

He actively contributed to making Liège (Belgium) a city open to the most contemporary art through the activities of A.P.I.A.W.

Second period: Neo-figuration: 1968-2002
He participated in the Belgian pavilion at the XXXVth Venice Biennale.

His neo-figurative work, not unrelated to Pop Art, has a tone of unusual humor, mixing objects and bodies, reality and abstraction. In chromatic mosaics, gold and silver leaf create profane icons.

If the artistic approach of this artist presents a Janus-faced profile, abstraction and figuration share the same irrepressible impulse, the same prolific ardor in an explosion of colors and curvilinear rhythms.

Georges Collignon died in Liège in 2002.

In 2005, the Liège Lions Club Val Mosan established in memory of its former member the Georges Collignon Biennial Prize.

Quotes:
“My visual and formal vocabulary could evolve from the moment I could do without these great elders (Klee, Magnelli, Léger, and Bonnard), but I would add that Magnelli, with his iron discipline of mind, taught me a lot. I have no fixed conception of abstraction, except to recall Maurice Denis’s definition of painting: 'a flat surface covered with colors in a certain order laid out,' and which still seems relevant to me. When I discovered abstract painting in 1945-1946, after the black hole of the occupation, it was a true illumination and an obligatory passage, enriching. Conversions were numerous; it was almost a religion, quickly dogmatic and intolerant. In 1967, I rediscovered figuration, which is not very well regarded, nor tolerated. One does not commit the heretic crime of lèse-abstraction without impunity by the orthodox, conventional, well-thinking art establishment. So today, as yesterday, against all aesthetic racism, I claim the right to difference. One only advances by changing, it is well known.”

Museumography:
Belgian State
French Community of Belgium – Brussels (Belgium)
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium – Museum of Modern Art – Brussels (Belgium)
Museum of Walloon Art – Liège (Belgium)
Open-air Museum of Sart-Tilman (University of Liège, Belgium)
Kunstmuseum aan Zee, abbreviated Mu.Zee – Ostend (Belgium)
Foundation for Belgian Contemporary Art – Brussels (Belgium)
National Museum of Modern Art – Paris (France)
Glasmuseum Frauenau (Wolfgang Kermer Collection)
Carnegie Institute – Pittsburgh (United States)
Museum of Modern Art - São Paulo (Brazil)
Louvain-la-Neuve Museum, UCL (Belgium)