Bronze Sculpture for Sale
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Pierre Carbonel
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France
• 1925
Biography
The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art Carbonel, Pierre French, 1925- 2011
According to Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Carbonel, born in Anglet, France, “is not an artist and does not want to be. For him the term artist is to be avoided.” Carbonel corresponded with Dubuffet for decades after first encountering the famous artist and founding advocate of Art Brut at a retrospective exhibition held at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 1960. Their letters have been published as a book in France.
A traveling chocolate and perfume salesman, Carbonel was also inspired by Dubuffet’s collection of works by self-taught artists. In an old cowshed on his family farm he began experimenting with blending emulsions to create what Dubuffet called his “combats with liquid densities.” The resulting abstract organic forms resemble driftwood, wind-sculpted desert rocks, close-ups of insects, complex striations of subterranean matter, moonscapes and haunting faces, often all at once. Although the images may at first seem accidental or even to have come about “naturally” Carbonel developed his technique to achieve a high degree of control and repeatability that allowed him to create multiple series of multi-layered paintings.
In 1973, Carbonel retired from life on the road and settled near Blois, in the Loire Valley. He moved into a small stone house in the countryside in a hamlet of five houses called “Les Motteux,” where he found occasional employment as a census taker and survey collector, and picked grapes and asparagus to make ends meet. Dubuffet’s death in 1985 left Carbonel without the support and encouragement that had largely motivated him. While his work is in nearly every major European collection of art brut and outsider art, and Dubuffet considered him one of his greatest “finds,” Carbonel has yet to be fully appreciated in the US, and so far, Intuit is one of the few American institutions to have accessioned his work.
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According to Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Carbonel, born in Anglet, France, “is not an artist and does not want to be. For him the term artist is to be avoided.” Carbonel corresponded with Dubuffet for decades after first encountering the famous artist and founding advocate of Art Brut at a retrospective exhibition held at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 1960. Their letters have been published as a book in France.
A traveling chocolate and perfume salesman, Carbonel was also inspired by Dubuffet’s collection of works by self-taught artists. In an old cowshed on his family farm he began experimenting with blending emulsions to create what Dubuffet called his “combats with liquid densities.” The resulting abstract organic forms resemble driftwood, wind-sculpted desert rocks, close-ups of insects, complex striations of subterranean matter, moonscapes and haunting faces, often all at once. Although the images may at first seem accidental or even to have come about “naturally” Carbonel developed his technique to achieve a high degree of control and repeatability that allowed him to create multiple series of multi-layered paintings.
In 1973, Carbonel retired from life on the road and settled near Blois, in the Loire Valley. He moved into a small stone house in the countryside in a hamlet of five houses called “Les Motteux,” where he found occasional employment as a census taker and survey collector, and picked grapes and asparagus to make ends meet. Dubuffet’s death in 1985 left Carbonel without the support and encouragement that had largely motivated him. While his work is in nearly every major European collection of art brut and outsider art, and Dubuffet considered him one of his greatest “finds,” Carbonel has yet to be fully appreciated in the US, and so far, Intuit is one of the few American institutions to have accessioned his work.
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