Reconnaissance, 1959

Michel Cadoret  

Michel Cadoret de l'Epinegue, Paris, 1912 - Cerny, 1985 A pupil of Luc Simon at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, Michel Cadoret exhibited in 1935 at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Tuileries. During the war, he joined the FFL in North Africa then went to London where, in 1944, he worked for the Commission for the restitution of works of art, before participating in the landing. He forges close ties with the Anglo-Saxon world which will make him the most New Yorker of French painters. After the war, in Paris, he was exhibited at the Roux-Hentschel gallery, became friends with Picasso but quickly suffocated in the capital. In 1958, he moved to New York, participated in the traveling exhibition France come to you, then moved to Mexico. His workshop in Erongaricuaro becomes the rallying point for European and American surrealists, Breton, Matta, Paalen, Varo and Carrington stay with him. He still painted figuratively, but was more and more influenced by the art of the Indians of Mexico, whose tapestries he exhibited in New York. He definitively abandons figurative painting with a symbolic achievement: the Apocalypse, painted in the church of Erongaricuaro! Until 1963, returned to New York, he worked intensely on form and color, incorporating into his painting the impressions accumulated during his travels. His research and the place he occupies on the New York scene make him the equal of Motherwell, Pollock, Rothko or Kline. On his return to Paris, he impresses with the vigor of his style and colors. The figure of the concentric circle becomes predominant in his work, with the use of pure tones. He devoted himself to the theme of the colander, which culminated with the publication of his book La colander à connerie, with texts by him and Varèse and a musical introduction by Marcel Duchamp. Exhibited at the Fürstenberg gallery, the Creuze gallery and the Charpentier gallery, he became “One of the five” of the Kaganovitch gallery, where a solo exhibition was dedicated to him in 1967. His work led him to focus on micro-drawings and then inks acrylics. In 1972, he set up his workshop in Cerny. In 1974, a retrospective was dedicated to him at the Saint-Germain en Laye museum.