MARTHE WÉRY PRESSFILE EXHIBITION > WORKS, STUDIES AND DOCUMENTS IN THE BPS22 COLLECTIONS MUSÉE D ART DE LA PROVINCE DE HAINAUT

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1 Marthe Wéry, untitled, 1976, BPS22 collection. Leslie Artamonow - graphic design : Heureux Studio MARTHE WÉRY WORKS, STUDIES AND DOCUMENTS IN THE BPS22 COLLECTIONS PRESSFILE EXHIBITION > MUSÉE D ART DE LA PROVINCE DE HAINAUT Province de HAINAUT

2 2 BPS22 MUSÉE D ART / PRESSFILE / MARTHE WÉRY SUMMARY 03 INTRODUCTION 05 THE ARTIST 06 THE EXHIBIT 06 SPACE 06 LIGHT AND TRANSPARENCY 09 THE DYNAMIC ARTICULATION OF THE PAINTING AND ITS FORMAT 09 THE LIVING SUBJECT 10 AROUND THE EXHIBIT 10 UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS 11 PRACTICAL INFORMATION g Marthe Wéry, untitled (Venice), 1982, BPS22 collection Leslie Artamonow

BPS22 MUSÉE D ART / PRESSFILE / MARTHE WÉRY 3 MORE THAN TEN YEARS AFTER THE LES COULEURS DU MONOCHROME (MONOCHROME COLOURS) EXHIBIT, HOSTED BY BPS22 AT THE TOURNAI BEAUX-ARTS MUSEUM, AS PART OF LILLE

3 BPS22 MUSÉE D ART / PRESSFILE / MARTHE WÉRY 3 MORE THAN TEN YEARS AFTER THE LES COULEURS DU MONOCHROME (MONOCHROME COLOURS) EXHIBIT, HOSTED BY BPS22 AT THE TOURNAI BEAUX-ARTS MUSEUM, AS PART OF LILLE 2004, EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE, THE GREAT BELGIAN ARTIST, MARTHE WÉRY IS AGAIN THE SUBJECT OF A MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE. IN CHARLEROI, THIS TIME! FROM HER FIRST GEOMETRIC PAINTINGS TO GREAT MONOCHROME ENSEMBLES, AND INCLUDING RULED PAPER AND SCRAPED PAINTINGS, BPS22 IS PRESENTING VISITORS WITH THE WORK BY THIS ARTIST WHO HAS SUBTLY AND WITHOUT CONCESSION EXPLORED ALL THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE BASE COMPONENTS OF PAINTING.

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5 BPS22 MUSÉE D ART / PRESSFILE / MARTHE WÉRY 5 f Marthe Wéry, untitled, 1976, BPS22 collection Leslie Artamonow f Marthe Wéry, untitled, 1982, BPS22 collection Leslie Artamonow THE ARTIST Marthe Wéry ( ) is without doubt among the most important artists in the history of Belgian art in the second half of the 20 th century. In 2001, following a retrospective at Bozar, she participated in a project integrating several works at the Palais Royal in Brussels, alongside photographer Dirk Braeckman and visual artist Jan Fabre. Through important ensembles, she is also a part of most collections of most Belgian museums (MRBA, S.M.A.K., M hka, MuZée) and in those of the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris Museum of Modern Art). However, BPS22 Musée d art de la Province de Hainaut (BPS22 the Art Museum of the Hainaut Province) has collected the largest number of her works, in particular through a loan of three major ensembles belonging to the Hainaut Province. Born in Brussels in 1930, Marthe Wéry studied painting as an unregistered student at La Grande Chaumière, in Paris, and learned engraving at Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter, while working as a self-taught sketch artist. After some studies, in particular in drawing (landscapes, nudes, battle scenes), she made her mark on the Belgian stage with her geometric engravings, inspired by constructivism (first personal exhibit at the Saint-Laurent gallery in Brussels). This was followed by a series of geometric paintings directly inspired by her engraving studies. At the beginning of the 1970s, she turned toward a form of minimalism, marked by her grey compositions consisting of heavy lines traced with a ruler; first on canvas, and then on paper in a variety of sizes and textures. She was then noticed on the international stage and participated in the Fundamental Painting exhibit at the Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam, in 1974; and then at Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany. In 1982, her work in the Belgian pavilion at the Venice Biennale marked the grand return of colour in her work. She continued the decade with radical experiments into the components of paintings (support, shape, frame, colour) in large series that included coloured elements. In the middle of the 1990s, new manners of painting developed, to exploit the potential of the painting surface; a radical period was then followed by a brighter, but still rigorous period, in which certain older preoccupations were expressed in different ways (architecture, light effects, etc.). Marthe Wéry died in 2005, shortly after her last exhibit, Les Couleurs du Monochrome (Monochrome Colours), hosted by BPS22, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tournai (Tournai Beaux-Arts Museum), as part of Lille 2004, European Capital of Culture.

6 6 BPS22 MUSÉE D ART / PRESSFILE / MARTHE WÉRY g Marthe Wéry, Tour et Taxi, 2001, BPS22 collection Leslie Artamonow THE EXHIBIT As the custodian of three ensembles (1974, 1987, ) belonging to the Hainaut Province (fifty pieces in total) that are emblematic of Marthe Wéry s work, BPS22 now has the largest collection of the artist s works. It represents all her periods, as well as some very rare sketches from the 1950s and engravings from the 1960s. This unequalled collection is completed with many studies, conducted throughout her career, as well as archives. Designed based on the BPS22 collections, the exhibit shows Marthe Wéry s entire oeuvre, with special attention to pieces and ensembles that have never been shown or have only rarely been shown. Through the various movements of a work - to use two expressions from the artist - which extends over nearly fifty years, we can discover the ongoing preoccupations of an artist guided by a rare, radical nature and long-standing questions. Thus, the exhibit will be structured around four of the artist s recurring preoccupations, which are intimately blended together: space, light, the dynamic articulation of the painting and its format, and lastly the subject as a living form. preparatory sketches will be shown for the first time (e.g. studies conducted after her trip to Chicago). LIGHT AND TRANSPARENCY A corollary to the attention Marthe Wéry paid to architecture was her long-standing preoccupation for the way in which her works reacted to changes in lighting. While she asserted this aspect in her brightly coloured work for the 1982 Venice Biennale, it can be seen well before and well after that: especially in shimmering colours applied with spray paint (e.g. panels from the geometric period) or in the quivering light effects in the Pontormo series, which clearly recall the stained-glass windows she created at several points during her life. Thus, the large glass roof at BPS22 is especially well suited to highlight this aspect, as the lighting changes during the day offer an exceptional point of view for the works presented. SPACE Since she gave up all figurative references early on, Marthe Wéry never stopped considering her works as objects, which is to say three dimensional shapes that maintain specific relationships with the surrounding space. Thus, the first geometric compositions undertaken at the end of the 1960s present a confirmed materiality; like the lined series on paper or the paintings partly framed by a ring of MDF (medium-density fibreboard) created at the end of the 1980s. The same is also true for the expansive Tour & Taxi installation, created in 2001, of fifteen folded aluminium panels. This aspect can also be seen in the attention that the artist paid to the architecture of the sites at which she showed her work and through her architecturally integrated projects, of which several

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9 BPS22 MUSÉE D ART / PRESSFILE / MARTHE WÉRY 9 f Marthe Wéry, untitled, 1990, Hainaut Province Collection Leslie Artamonow THE DYNAMIC ARTICULATION OF THE PAINTING AND ITS FORMAT In one of her interviews, Marthe Wéry emphasised the need to link the pictorial form with the format of its medium. In this sense, the all over form (the way of covering all of the medium) that she used throughout her life is always linked dynamically to its medium. This articulation between the painting and its format, one creating tension with the structure of the other, flows throughout her oeuvre, from the first geometric paintings - and even in some older sketches - to her last works. THE LIVING SUBJECT Starting in the 1990s, Marthe Wéry developed new ways of painting that, after the panel assemblies, attract attention to the surface again. Flows of paint, scraping effects, roughness in the material, etc. stir up vibrations in the surface and seem to animate it with living movement; like the way the line series could, or the raw frames for the large ensembles of the 1980s, or the patient work to cover sheets of paper with colours. Thus, new connections were built among the works, independently of the of the periods in question, confirming the overall consistency of the oeuvre. From a curatorial point of view, this new exhibit is thus very different from the one shown in Tournai in Unlike that one, which was an opportunity to assist the artist in developing the studies she was conducting at the time, this new exhibit is more of a retrospective appraisal, allowing the rediscovery of an oeuvre that was constructed of successive extensions over several decades. Rigorous extensions, as has often been said, traversed by ongoing preoccupations, but that never exclude clear forms of pleasure; not only the pleasure that the artist took in creating her works, but also that she wanted to transmit to the visitors to her exhibits.

10 10 EXHIBIT > MARTHE WÉRY. WORKS, STUDIES AND DOCUMENTS IN THE BPS22 COLLECTIONS Curator : Pierre-Olivier Rollin AROUND THE EXHIBIT COCKTAIL CONFERENCES - CYCLE #1 11:00 am > 12:30 pm SAT : LA PEINTURE DÉCOMPOSÉE (PAINTING DECONSTRUCTED) with Pierre-Olivier Rollin, Director of BPS22 SAT : LE VITRAIL CONTEMPORAIN À LA LUMIÈRE DE L ŒUVRE DE MARTHE WÉRY (THE CONTEMPORARY STAINED-GLASS WINDOW IN LIGHT OF MARTHE WÉRY S OEUVRE) with Dorothée Duvivier, curator at BPS22. PHILOSOPHY TEAS - CYCLE #2 SUN :30 pm With Maud Hagelstein, Philosopher of Art and Researcher at ULG. WORKSHOPS FOR CHILDREN 9:30 am > 4:30 pm 03 > : PRINTING, WORKSHOP ON COLOURS AND PRINTING for children ages > : ACTION!, A WORKSHOP ON PRODUCING AN ANIMATED SHORT for children ages 8 and up BPS22 FOR CHILDREN 13 > :00 am > 7:00 pm Tour, workshops, and entertaining installation as part of the Pépites, l Art et les Tout-petits festival (Little Gems, Art and the Very Young) UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS RAPHAËL ZARKA RIDING MODERN ART > The French plastic artist transforms the Museum s great hall into a novel skate park. Skaters will free ride on the modular sculptures inspired by the geometric volumes of German mathematician Arthur Schoenflies. Raphaël Zarka also shows his audience a selection of black and white photographs of skaters evolving on modern sculptures. The multifaceted artist (sculpture, painting, drawing, video, photography) is also an author renowned for his historical researches around the skateboard, his preferred method of transportation.

11 11 OUTDOORS ARTVIEW#5. BPS22 ART OBJET > ADAM > PLACE DE BELGIQUE 1020 BRUXELLES Within the framework of the 5th edition of Artview, the ADAM is hosting the BPS22. From the 1980s, artists began to be interested in the boundaries between the work of art and the everyday object. They questioned the paradoxical nature of industrial design creations, being intrigued by the dual functionality of these items. They then took to creating works that were situated on the borderline between design and the plastic arts. Following in the wake of Duchamp s Ready-Made movement, then the Pop Art trend, this exhibition brings together around ten works (by Michel François, Wim Delvoye, Méret Oppenheim, Gilbert & George, Maarten Baas and Marcel Marïen) from the collection of pieces that span the frontier between design and the plastic arts that is held by the Province of Hainaut. SUPER DÉMOCRATIE. LE SÉNAT DES CHOSES PARLEMENT FÉDÉRAL > RUE DE LA LOI, BRUXELLES Exhibit of the BPS22 and the M hka collections at the Belgian Senate. PRACTICAL INFORMATION MUSÉE D ART DE LA PROVINCE DE HAINAUT Bd Solvay, 22 B-6000 Charleroi guide.bps22.be T E. Museum open from Tuesday through Sunday, 11:00 am > 7:00 pm Closed Mondays, and 24.12, 25.12, 31.12, and from through RATES: 6 / seniors: 4 / students and job-seekers: 3 / ages 12 and under: free Groups of 10 or more: 4 / Guides: 50 or 60 (Weekends) per group of 15 people. Free for schools and associations (tour+workshop), reservation required. PRESS CONTACT Laure Houben : M : / E : laure.houben@bps22.be Province de HAINAUT

12 MUSÉE D ART DE LA PROVINCE DE HAINAUT BOULEVARD SOLVAY, CHARLEROI BELGIQUE

MARTHE WÉRY WORKS, STUDIES AND DOCUMENTS IN THE BPS22 COLLECTIONS > EXHIBIT VISITORS GUIDE MUSÉE D ART DE LA PROVINCE DE HAINAUT

MARTHE WÉRY WORKS, STUDIES AND DOCUMENTS IN THE BPS22 COLLECTIONS > EXHIBIT VISITORS GUIDE MUSÉE D ART DE LA PROVINCE DE HAINAUT MARTHE WÉRY Marthe Wéry, untitled,, 1976, BPS22 collection. Leslie Artamonow - graphic design : Heureux Studio WORKS, STUDIES AND DOCUMENTS IN THE BPS22 COLLECTIONS EXHIBIT 25.02 > 23.07.2017 MUSÉE D ART