Composition 1, 1959

Bernard Pomey  

Bernard Pomey was born July 8, 1928 in Firminy, Loire, France; elder brother of Jean-Marie Pomey; 1947-1948, Beaux-Arts de Paris; 1959, committed suicide on September 23 in his studio in Montparnasse. Figurative from 1950 to 1958, Vase fleuri sur une chaise, (1955) with a vol atil expressionism, he discovered, in 1958, lyrical abstraction * and painted, for a season, from spring 1959 to his suicide at the beginning of autumn, tachistes * canvases, grouped in three series, Gaia, Hélia, Sélia. The first series is the most personal and the most structured, marked by black H-shaped signs standing out, as in all of his paintings, against a cement background; sometimes are incorporated volumes imitating in trompe l'oeil perfect flint agglomerates. Hélia, they are nebulae, black sidereal pathways accompanied by streaks and colored bursts. Sélia, finally, represents a little the synthesis of the two preceding series, less structured than the first, more compact than the second. There remain the gouaches and, in particular, the suite of 35 illustrations of the Spiritual Canticle of Saint-Jan de la Croix, the latest work, commissioned by Maeght. All the work is indicative of the style of the 50s, a spontaneous painting à la Rorschach which does not reject either the flows or the feet of flies.