Peter & Pierre

LITHOGRAPHS

Drawn from Peter Bramsen’s collection, the works in the exhibition traced half a century of adventure and friendship, which resulted in works full of audacity, humour and freedom. In them, we see the vibrancy of the artist’s graphic vocabulary. The blacks and whites in which the energetic brushstroke expresses its evocative power are juxtaposed with the intense, sometimes furious colours which explode from the brisk paintbrush. In printing there is a way of using colour which takes your breath away, explains Pierre Alechinsky. With Peter, I followed a clear path that starts from the colour itself: warm, animal, vegetable, mineral, cold and ethereal.

PETER & PIERRE: the printer and the artist

We attacked our first stone in 1963, recalls Peter Bramsen. He has printing in his blood. He knows all the tricks of the trade. Printing is a second family for him. It’s always a joy to work with such an artist, who is so precise and a true master of his craft. You can tell how much he loves it. His most admirable qualities are his patience and his extraordinary powers of concentration. And this means that he never leaves anything to chance. Even if that means spending hours walking around his stone, prowling around it, inspecting it from every conceivable angle, to position it, hone it, scribble on parts of it, add things to it, get rid of marks, envisage a colour, another colour, etc. Quite a process, which might seem pointless to the uninitiated – but that is where all his talent lies. Pierre loves taking risks.

PROCESSED DOCUMENTS

The artist used his paintbrush in combination with other media: old pieces of writing, notarial deeds, outdated invoices and their corresponding demands for payment “by return of post”. These sources of inspiration, picked up at flea markets and then faithfully reproduced, are given a second life.

UNBROWSABLE BOOKS

The exhibition also featured around twenty porcelain books created by the ceramic artist Hans Spinner and painted by Pierre Alechinsky. A little Chinese paintbrush that I know well, dipped in cobalt oxide. This paintbrush designed for use on a rectangle of canvas or paper suddenly invents new journeys. In the third dimension.