Claude Gesvret

We understand better from the beginning. From the Beaux-arts of Lorient to those of Paris, Claude Gesvret explores his practice with fervor and lucidity. His first realistic works: roofs, facades, self-portraits, urban buildings, in the memory of De Staël or Robert Delaunay, condensed and built with authority, naturally lead him to "crossing the line". So, by brief or prolonged gestures, already repeated and fragmented, using a lumpy paste and a contrasting but rather muffled chroma, he patiently structures his canvases, accumulating and superimposing forms, signs and landmarks edge to edge. , until the dilution of its units. In the 1980s, within the interstitial non-colors that now codify the field, geometric forms emerge as a counterpoint, like a safeguard against possible wanderings. During the 1990s, the textures of his oil or acrylic formats loosened and harbored streaks, stripes, filaments, creases or collages, layered, under-layered and overlaps, enhanced by the fiery glow of chalky passages, which exalt the intensity of the rendering, without altering its coherence. The 2000s, always based on the same patterns, recapitulate the previous achievements in a new light. The masses expand, the imbrications of stable and effervescent forms punctuate the balance of the canvas and the lacunar zones contribute to its breathing, after so much effervescence. Then, in the 2010s, the whites and reserves gained ground, the colors became lighter, but the swirling forms, ventilated like gusts of wind and aggregated into islands of moving material sprinkled with deep blacks, continued their dialogue with the long intricate and staggered bands, which give the final measure of this work free of dead time.
Now if we had to pair the painting of Claude Gesvret with a family of spirit, it would not be informalism, too hybrid, but surely the expressionist filiation. Strong in its unitary, effusive variations steeped in humanity, its restless presence brings us back to the order of the relative and places it at a level of fundamental requirement.