Looks intresting to read or visit: The world of Fred Deux_Exhibition Museum of Fine Arts, Lyon Sept 20,

The world of Fred Deux_Exhibition Museum of Fine Arts, Lyon

THE WORLD OF FRED DEUX 20 September 2017 - 18 January 2018

Press release / 18 September 2017 Agenda

Lyon's Museum of Fine Art pays a tribute to Fred Deux (1924-2015) by organising the largest ever exhibition of his work. Fred Deux, illustrator, oral poet, writer, and, under the pseudonym Jean Douassot, author of a cult book, La Gana, was a singular artist who cannot be categorised in terms of art fashions and trends. This autodidact, born in the basement of a large house in Boulogne-Billancourt to a working-class family, constantly had to overcome, as he used to say. “He had to overcome”: overcome the basement walls to access the life which called him and burnt inside of him. Overcome the barriers between the arts, moving from drawing to the written word, and from the page to the tape recorder. Thanks to which he recounted stories to himself in an endless reverie, constantly exploring the unknown in himself. Overcoming and being overcome: gradually immersing himself in drawing, so that it was life itself which overcame him and surrendered to him. The exhibition, consisting of 230 drawings, reconstructs the polyphonic world of Fred Deux. Following a chronological thread, that of the cycles through which the artist laboured, it shows the underlying coherence of a body of work which from the outset, like two moulds, formed the tools which were to shape it: the line and the stain. From the drawings known as Kleepathology completed in Marseille in the late 1940’s, through to his final work, via major departures - Otages, Spermes noirs and Spermes colorés, Self-portraits, the monumental drawings of the 1980’s, unique books where the line simultaneously forms the mark and the word – this is the world of Fred Deux which is there to be seen and experienced. Objects fashioned by the artist and tribal art objects of his surrondings, like essential presences, echo his graphical work and replace it in his life journey. This exhibition is made possible thanks to recent major donations which have enriched the museum’s graphical art collections.

Exhibition curators: Sylvie Ramond, chief heritage curator at the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon; Pierre Wat, lecturer in contemporary art history at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Fred Deux, Quand la lune boit de l’eau, 2010, Galerie Alain Margaron © ADAGP, Paris 2017

Fine Arts Museum of Lyon 20 place des Terreaux 69001 Lyon France + 33 (0)4 72 10 17 40 OPENING TIMES Daily between 10am and 6pm Fridays between 10.30am and 6pm Closed Tuesdays and during bank holidays (15 August).

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