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Georges Mathieu
GEORGES MATHIEU, c.1965. OIL ON CANVAS.
Mathieu saw the movement of ‘Lyrical Abstraction’ that he created as a conclusion to the revolution of art history, following in the slipstream of freedom that avant-garde movements before him allowed. Impressionism freed the artwork from realism, Cubism from shapes, Geometric abstraction from the representation of perceived reality and lyrical abstraction was the final destruction. ‘Henceforth in the history of shapes as in the history of the world’, said Mathieu, ‘the sign precedes its meaning’. His work was freed from the requirements of meaning, he painted with gesture and passion, and painted in public in early happenings that broke down the barriers between artist and observer. He saw public creation as an act of true and joyful communion, a connection built from the shared focus on a visual impetus that requires no context to understand. Mathieu’s lyrical abstraction was not the conclusion he hoped it would be, movements after him returned meaning to their signs, but to look at his large scale works is to see an artist totally unchained, aesthetics that are freed from millennia of expectations to sing of total freedom.