Charles Lapicque

From the 1940s onwards, Lapicque truly revolutionised French painting. As a colourist and theoretician, he marked a turning point with his works produced between 1939 and 1953, contributing decisively to the development of non-figurative art. After exploring figurative abstraction, Lapicque incorporated elements borrowed from Cubism into his compositions, such as multiple perspectives and transparency. In 1942, he introduced green into his palette and clarified the lighting in his works. From 1944 onwards, his style became more liberated thanks to the adoption of a surrealist technique: gestural drawing, or impulse drawing. He excelled in the art of interlacing and trajectories, while the grid of his compositions evolved towards the arabesque. The drawings, almost unconsciously traced, come to life on various supports thanks to various techniques, such as graphite, Indian ink wash or grease pencil. Thus, he creates a series of Regattas and seascapes, where he multiplies the loops and interlacings. These masterpieces, composed of broad strokes of pure color and dark elements, present a sea in perpetual reinvention.
His studies of the sea offer a new reinterpretation of movement, always using transparency, a technique he had adopted from Raoul Dufy, whom he deeply admired. The effect of transparency is accentuated by the use of tracing paper, applied to white canvases, bringing an additional dimension to his works.