Jean Dewasne, a master of monumental painting, died on July 23rd 1999 in Paris at 78. Born in Northern France, Jean Dewasne turned to abstract painting at 20 as he believed that contrary to figurative painting, which he considered as a reactionary element of plastic feelings, abstraction was a leap forward in art.
Believing that abstract painting was a sure way to gather men, he took part in the re-foundation of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1946 and set up four years later with Edgard Pillet a studio of abstract art in the famed rue de la Grande Chaumière which attracted many American artists who had come to Paris after the war.
It was during one his courses on the technology of painting that he met Daniel Cordier, a young student who had been the personal secretary of Jean Moulin, the mythical figure of the French Resistance Movement who was also a painter.
Cordier described Dewasne as a rigorous theoritician who had introduced in abstract painting the tormented dreams of Piranese while keeping exhuberant emotional feelings within what he considered the most severe constraints, giving a baroque touch to geometric painting which by essence was cold.
Cordier also pinpointed one of Dewasne's main contributions to painting in the 1950's noting that he had rejected the technical easiness of traditional painting and invented new means that eschewed cheating with surface, colours or the viewer and were tackling problems without denying or studying them.
Jean Dewasne was awarded the Kandinsky Prize in 1946 and worked for the Denise René Gallery. In 1951, while the debate on Social-realism was getting into full gear, he painted the "Apotheosis of Marat" which had the value of a manifesto, meaning that one could be a Communist militant while carrying out a form of modern painting much opposed to the aesthetics preached by the Communist Party. This monumental painting paved the way to innovating techniques such as aluminium or hardboard support and industrial paint.
He also invented in 1951 what he called the "antisculptures" after finding the rear of a racecar which seduced him. After sawing the base of that element, he placed it upwards and discovered that he could paint its external and internal sides at the same time. He said this was not a sculpture but a painting which, instead of being applied on one plane was on a curved or hollowed surface. The first work of his series was titled "The tomb of Anton Webern".
At the end of the 1960's, Dewasne tackled greater surfaces such as a 95 square metre work for the ice-rink of Grenoble during the 1968 Olympic Games, the 36 panels over a surface of 86 metre-long titled "The Long March" for the University of Lille or the 1200 square metre painting titled "Grenoble 70" for the Museum of Grenoble. He also produced a mural painting for the Hamburg subway and worked on four 100 metre high paintings destined for the Grand Arch concept at la Defense, just off Paris. Dewasne appeared much neglected at the end of his life being dubbed the master of "Ripolin" (a trademark for industrial paint) but his obsessive determination to associate art to urban architecture made him one of the greatest exponents of monumental painting.
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