In 2001, Pierre Daix published his analysis of Antoni Clavé’s assemblages. On the occasion of the book’s twentieth anniversary, the Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch in Issoudun is presenting an exhibition devoted to Antoni Clavé’s assemblages in painting, collage, sculpture, tapestry and other objects. As at Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale in 2018 and again at the Musée Rigaud in Perpignan in 2019, this exhibition is curated by Aude Hendgen, head of the Antoni Clavé Archives.
More than a tribute to the friendship between the artist and the author, the exhibition highlights Antoni Clavé’s taste for matter, its alterations, its erosions, by presenting works on both panel and canvas from the 1960s, as well as tapestry-assemblages, box-objects from the 1970s, and original wooden sculptures exploring different materials (newspaper, rope, fabric, wood, cardboard, pastel, oils, acrylics. …) that the artist liked to tangle up, juxtapose, sometimes remove, throughout his creation until the early 2000s.
The “papiers froissés” (creased papers) of the late 1970s as well as the homages made to Picasso in the mid-1980s renewed Clavé’s assemblage art and rendered it even more complex. As someone with an insatiable curiosity who was very much a loner, Clavé also nourished his art with his travels, including voyages to Japan in 1986 and the United States in 1989. Returning to his studio, he would assemble visual extracts from these trips, memories and appropriations. It was in this fashion that he would devise dialogues between collages and trompe l’oeil, between flat areas of color and embossing, transparencies, imprints and tears to better exalt the substance of his creations.
The exhibition “Antoni Clavé – Assemblages” features pieces from the MAM in Paris and the MACBA in Barcelona, as well as works on loan from private collections, some for the first time, for a total of 38 works, mostly large formats, dating from 1960 to 2002.
The exhibition will be on view from 5 June to 19 September 2021.