Frédéric Klein

It was through film photography that Frédéric Klein took his first artistic steps before turning to printmaking. These two visual arts involve various entries which help to unveil a work. In photography, the shooting induces a development work with a technical aspect around the baths. This multiple approach which reveals the work, thanks to its technicality, its subtlety, its magic is not so far removed from the art of the engraver who works his plate with the dry point, the acid attack, the ink before offering him this ultimate passage under the weight of the press which finally reveals the finished work.

Painting then became obvious to Frédéric Klein. It is more flexible, freer work, but also responds to the principle of successive creative stages. The preparation of the canvas is a ceremony during which the artist takes up the gestures and materials of the origins of painting. His linen or hemp fabrics, which date from the 1920s, are treated with great care. He holds them out with strength and determination, fixes them delicately on a wooden frame before coating them with an artisan preparation. This step is essential and allows the creative work, in oil, to unfold in a territory marked by a strong plastic identity. The final work being already engaged by the impact of the preliminary stages.

His painted works are not mirrors of his engraved works. If the vein is close, the facets are far apart. It is indeed a completely different plastic definition that marks the transcription of his engraving work into painting. To the finesse and purity of the engraved lines, he opposes the sobriety, the darkness and the strength of the painted prints.

Attracted by the chromatic field of black and blue, he declines shades and textures to associate them with the purity of white. His palette is restricted but not monochrome. The blacks and blues are varied and play with each other, multiplying the effects of transparency.

His abstract works offer our gaze an elegant graphic score.