Tzigane portant un enfant - Hongrie 1968, 2019

Michel Hosszù  

With Michel Hosszù, it is a small piece of the history of art of the twentieth century that is offered to us and especially that of Pop Art.

Warhol and New York Pop Art from the 60s. But let's rewind the movie. Michel Hosszù arrives in the world on October 26, 1944 in Hungary. His mother is French, He arrives in France in 1949.

He studied at the Ecole Estienne (the Graduate School of Arts and Graphic Industries) and graduated in hand, he left for the United States. Michel Hosszù arrives New York in 1964, he is twenty years old. He will stay there until 1966.

He studied photography and discovered Pop Art. He trailed a bit at Warhol's Factory like so many others. We go in, we go out, the story is running, but who really knows then? Michel sees it unfold before his eyes, he rubs Warhol, he rubs the vanguard of his time, he is twenty.

He discovered the use of screen printing and photography in the artistic production of Pop Art. For the young graduate of Estienne, it's a real revelation. But at the end of 1966, the army called him under the flag, he returned to France to do his military service.

To say that this event is going to affect his artistic career is not exaggerated. Because it will emerge from his passage under the flags completely broken. At this time, conscription is not especially a place of fulfillment for a young artist. But more broadly, French society is not as progressive in contemporary art as our neighbors across the Atlantic.

To understand well, the feeling of helplessness, frustration and finally distrust that Michel Hosszù will end up contracting in front of the market and institutions of art, it is necessary to get back in the context of the time.

It was in the eye of the cyclone and here it is in full new realism in France pre-68, well before Yvon Lambert, Daniel Templon decline the avant-garde of the conceptual and minimalist Americans.

He continues his research in screen printing and photographic montages and finds his way in the techniques of multiplication, fragmentation and juxtaposition of portraits specific to Pop Art. Always precursor, he adheres to the Mail Art of which he will be an eminent representative in Europe.

Not very concerned about his career, but supported by two very great collectors, multiplying collaborations and group shows under the influence of his many artist friends (Assadour Bezdikian, Michel Rabanelly, Michel Vincemot, Vladimir Velikovic, Natasha Krenbol, Jérome Mesnager, Dominique Issermann, Mario Avati, Robert Doisneau, Georges Noêl), he will continue his career as an artist far off the beaten path.

In February 1987, when Andy Warhol disappeared, he decided to pay tribute to him while remaining true to his provocative spirit and his ambiguity, and he created the first world stamp with the image of Andy Warhol.

In addition to his own works, from that date on, he continuously creates art stamps for other artists, galleries, museums, and companies looking for innovative and original communication support.

But let's go back to his work. There is in Michel Hosszù "a mise en abime" of the human destiny by the "Grotesque". This same enclosed space already sealed, at work in ancient tragedy.

We find in his Auto macules and his Auto grimaces, this paroxysmic dimension, this grotesque gesture of expression, such a conjuratory excess to our common and tragic destiny.

It's time to finally discover Michel Hosszù.