Michaelis in an original style and new eye is painting in a very oniric atmosphere between figurative and abstraction daily life in "Paris" and "Parisians". This Solo Show in Lise Cormery Gallery presents several series of oil paintings on paper or wood, "Paris Blanc" "Paris in White", "Paris Orange", since the orange was the very fashionable color of the 60's 70's, and "Paris in black, Paris at night", as well as "Parisians". We can discover, "My Psy", "Horse racing in Auteuil", "Night Club", "Dancing at night", "Cafés", "Bowling players", "Bistro and dice players", etc.
Jochen MICHAELIS Biography
Jochen Michaelis was born in Postdam, Germany in 1938, he is the grandson of Georg Michaelis (1857-1936), Minister President of Prussia and in 1917 German imperial Chancellor of Germany, Heading the administration of Pomerania from 1918 to 1919. Jochen Michaelis studies painting at Kassel KunstAkademie, Germany. In Paris he studies very young at Beaux-Arts with painter Chapelain Midy and studies as well the art of lithography with professor Clarin. He will perfect his technical knowledge of art printing in Pratt Graphis Center of New York later on.
Michaelis, travels and exhibits his paintings of a keen and poetic observer of people in their daily life in Paris, New York, Berlin, also during a trip in Mexico.
In Paris his artistic career is launched very fast and he becomes famous very young, exhibited in many art galleries in Paris. In 1958, he is only twenty years old and all the Press and Art critics are acclaiming his paintings and soon he belongs to all the important collections of contemporary art.
For art critic and art magazine "ARTS", "Michaelis is painting scenes of daily life like did Bonnard or Lautrec, with ambiguous faces lost in vast spaces. He is fascinated by the loneliness of people lost in moving crowds." For "Le Monde", "Michaelis creates large and very personal compositions full of energy where humor is not forgotten." "Combat", a left-wing newspaper, the most powerful Post-War media making or breaking artistic careers, with signatures of famous writers like Albert Camus, Raymond Aron, André Gide, writes an important article devoted to Michaelis with a photo of the artist sitting in the middle of dozens of paintings on the ground, one can recognize on the lower right "The Parisian with false eyelashes" painted in his expressionist manner. The art critic writes a long text "Michaelis painting is a dream sometimes bitter, full of tenderness, sometimes with a sense of humor, rhythm and violence. He is a painter of a Parisian way of life, recreating scenes of daily life" like Daumier did."
Lise Cormery in her book "The art of the Post-War Ecole de Paris" writes.
"Michaelis studied and decide to live during many years in Paris and thus belongs to the German Post-War Ecole de Paris. Indeed, in the fifties, Germany is still deeply injured, art schools are destroyed, the country divided into East and West and artists have to find a shelter in order to create in peace, far away from political turmoil.
"Michaelis in his "Paris Orange" and his "White Paris" is painting The Humble against the Arrogant. With his series of paintings "Night in Paris", Michaelis is painting the crowds in quest of pleasure and dressed for the occasion.
But Michaelis is starting painting Paris in "Orange" in 1958, a rare color, very seldom used in the past. A long time after him, in the 70's it will become very fashionable and Orange will become the Must Color for designers, and everything will be declined with Orange in fashion, design, advertising.
Paris, during the 60's and 70's is a paradox where two different worlds are confronted, the humble Paris of old stones attached to Paris City of Light of yesteryear against the presumptuous Paris, in love with concrete and "progress".
Michaelis is painting in 1968 "Paris Détruit, Géraniums et pelleteuse Orange" "Destroying Paris, Orange Geraniums and Orange Excavator", depicting the forgotten world of the humble, victim of the Bouygues "Orange excavator" destroying modest or historical homes in Montparnasse and Latin Quarter district. Although hope remains in heart, some keep flourishing their humble windows with "Orange geraniums", as an act of resistance, giving a touch of light to forgotten shelters desperate Parisians don't want to live for suburbs lost in nowhere.
While the humble remains frightened, petrified by the destruction of Paris of the future, the arrogant Paris with the paintings "Cocktail Party" and "Maître d'hôtel" in chic restaurants and night-clubs, tearing away cultural Paris with recklessness, enjoys life. Paris is vibrating with joy, life is still cheap and some well-off students "Daddy's boy" are "provoking" the world, everything is permitted for these rich petty-bourgeois dilettantes, honking like grownups, they become the new media and want the world to believe they are making a "Revolution", although "68" is nothing but a chaos created by spoilt and greedy kids. These ambitious petty-bourgeois want the arrogation of media and political power and indeed they will get it and it is still within their greedy and arrogant hands.
Michaelis, observe the birth of a new Paris, between hope and despair. Two worlds are still fighting. Old stones of yesteryear Paris, where sculptor Pablo Gargallo in his modest Montparnasse studio harbored the newcomer Picasso, where they were fed by the fresh eggs of the hen running happily in his tiny garden, so far away from the ugly invasion of concrete. Montparnasse is brutally destroyed. Instead of the romantic Paris, concrete and ugliness of Bouygues is invading the city with highways along the Seine River and gigantic towers in La Defense, so arrogant, and like the Twin Towers, they are believing they are just indestructible. And beyond Michaelis times observing Paris, the massacre of many preserved blocks of 14th arrondissement continues with the closing of hospitals while Covid is killing.
In his "White Paris, foggy pale dawn From Paris City of Light to Dusty Paris" the painter plays on the melancholy of Paris, with its pale mornings, its bistros misted up by alcohol, when a thin fog is creeping up from the Seine River, and Paris is suddenly wrapped into a fluffy pale veil. At dawn Michaelis observes two crowds, two worlds crossing each other but ignoring one another, the wandering night-owls with their hangovers, nicknamed "Fêt'Arts" or "Couche Tard" just out from nightclubs rushing into bistros that have just opened to have a last coffee or a nightcap, while the invisible workers are rushing into and out of subways and sweepers are already starting their long day's work.
Starting in 1958 many art galleries in Paris and New York showed Michaelis paintings and sold them to private collectors, where they still belong. Thanks to their recovery we can discover the spirit prevailing in this lost Paris, a poetic world between abstract and figurative painting, with elegant ladies, typical open-air markets and picturesque characters meeting in bistros, playing dice in the early morning or sharing a "café crème. A lost beloved Michaelis dreamlike Paris."
INTERNATIONAL COLLECTIONS His paintings sold by art galleries are still in private hands in Paris, New York and in Germany.
Some International SOLO SHOWS International SOLO SHOWS
1958 Galerie de la Maison des Beaux-Arts Paris 1959 Galerie Glaser-Cordier, Paris 1962 1963 Galerie d'art J. Montana 124, rue du faubourg Saint Honoré, Paris 1964 1967 Galerie Jacques Casanova, Palais-Royal, Paris 1971 Galerie Fischbacher, 33, rue de Seine, Paris 1979 Galerie Raesfeld, Cologne, Allemagne 1979 Galerie Nonson, Soho, New York 1982 Profile Gallery, New York 1984 Galerie Raspail Rive Gauche, Paris 1985 Profile Gallery, New York 1985 1986 Galerie du Marais, Paris 1986 Galerie Raspail Rive Gauche, Paris 1987 Galerie du Marais, Paris 1988 Galerie Tullagasse 2, Breisach am Rhein, Allemagne 1989 Reece Gallery, New York 1991 1992 Galerie Lise Cormery Olympiades des Arts 1992 Montserrat Gallery, New York 1992 The Emerging Collector Gallery, New York 1992 Galerie Bassler Freiburg, Allemagne 1992 Galerie Tullagasse 2, Breisach am Rhein, Allemagne 1993 Montserrat Gallery, New York 1993 Galerie Lise Cormery 1993 1994 1995 1997 Galerie Museum Egon Von Kameke, Postdam, Allemagne. Lukacs Gallery Toronto & De Silgahi Gallery, Burlington, Canada.
PARIS OLYMPIADS En 1991 et 1992, lors des évènements internationaux sous l'égide du Président Mitterrand et du Maire de Paris, Jacques Chirac, Michaelis est sélectionné pour représenter l'Allemagne avec ses peintures de "Paris", lors des Olympiades des Arts organisées par la Galerie Lise Cormery, pour le CNOSF, Comité National Olympique et Sportif Français, à l'occasion des Jeux Olympiques de 1992 en France. Cet évènement international faisait suite aux Olympiades des Arts de Séoul où la ville fonde pour cette compétition un Musée de peintures internationales et le SOMA, un Musée de sculptures monumentales en plein air, avec des artistes invités venus du monde entier pour exposer et représenter l'art du XXe siècle.
INTERNATIONAL ART CRITIC PRESS - PRESSE CRITIQUE D'ART INTERNATIONALE
1958 "Arts" 14.10. 1958, "Le Monde" 17.10.1958, "L'Amateur d'Art" 25.10.1958, "Le Figaro" 10. 1958, "Combat" 27.10.1958, "Masques et Visages" Septembre 1958, "L'information" Octobre 1958. 1962 "Echos des Arts" 10. 1962, "Le Hors-Cote" Mars & Avril, "Combat" Avril. 1963 "Les Arts", "Combat" 8 & 23 mars, "ARTS", "Les Echos", "Pariser Kurier", "Die Welt", "Carnet des Arts". 1964 "Combat", "ARTS". 1967 "Santé Publique". 1968 Couverture Cover "La Légion Violette, Revue de La Légion d'Honneur, des Palmes Académiques Arts et Lettres". 1979 "Manhattan East" New York. 1982 1984 "Art Speak" New York. "ART New York". 1994 "Spiegel", "Der Welt". 1984 "L'amateur d'art" 1986 "L'amateur d'art".
SOME PUBLICATIONS QUELQUES PUBLICATIONS
Gerhard Werner Weber, Solange Lemaire, Gérard Weber, Catherine de Hulewicz, François Pluchart, Cate Miodini, Phyllis Lee, Palmer Poroner, Elvira Kühn, Claude Lesuer, Claude Dorval, Lise Cormery."
"The art of the Post-War Ecole de Paris", Lise Cormery, Michelangelo Publications, Paris.
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