Press release
"All I have ever tried to do in painting is to achieve a kind of absence, so that painting is completely itself."
Eugène Leroy, 1979 (Eindhoven / Paris, 1988)
Galerie Michael Werner, Cologne is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of French artist Eugène Leroy (1910-2000).
Eugène Leroy began his career as a painter in the late 1930s and early 1940s in the provinces of northern France, near Lille. It took quite some time before the anonymous part of French painting, generally subsumed as École du Nord, which did not belong to the Mediterranean or internationally associated French style, was carried by Leroy to Paris.
In the early 1950s, it was then that the activity of a small interest group brought his paintings to one of the important galleries (Claude Bernard). This happened at the end of an era of lively debate within the visual arts in France (Derain, Giacometti, Étienne-Martin, Ipoustéguy, Herbin), which soon came to a halt caused by the isolation of the center of Paris.
Subsequently, Leroy's work was represented and disseminated by Galerie Michael Werner.
This exhibition features an extensive selection of twenty-six paintings, including landscapes, the human figure, and still-lifes. Almost simultaneously, the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris is dedicating a major retrospective to the artist from 15 April to 28 August 2022, with one hundred and fitfy works that illustrate the complexity of his process of creation. In addition, the Hall Art Foundation recently opened a solo exhibition of the artist's work at Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg, on view through 26 June 2022.
Works by Eugène Leroy are in major American and European collections and have been exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; Stedlijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; and Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice. He took part in documenta IX in Kassel in 1992 and in the Venice Biennale in 1995. The Musée Beaux Arts Tourcoing was renamed MUba Eugène Leroy in honor of the painter in 2010.
The exhibition "Eugène Leroy" opens on Friday, 11 March 2022 from 3 - 8 pm and will be on view at Galerie Michael Werner, Cologne from 12 March to 14 May 2022. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 11 am - 6 pm and Saturday 11 am - 4 pm. For more information, please contact us by phone at +49 (0)221 9254620 or by email at galeriewerner@michaelwerner.de.
