Bernard Réquichot
The Réquichot of Daniel Cordier
As part of a series of exhibitions dedicated to the Daniel Cordier collection, Galerie Christophe Gaillard is pleased to present its first Bernard Réquichot (1929–1961) exhibition.
The gallery has chosen to show around 30 of the artist's pieces, particularly his lettres illisibles, the last remnants of the research he was conducting at the time of his tragic death, which occurred just 48 hours before the preview of his second individual exhibition at Galerie Daniel Cordier.
From 1941, he began painting religious subjects during his school years at various Catholic schools near Paris. Between 1947 and 1951, he attended numerous art schools and workshops in Paris, namely the Charpentier, Beaux-Arts and Grande Chaumière Academies. In 1951, he met Daniel Cordier. During this period, Réquichot developed his style; he painted series of ‘large women’, drew with a grease pencil and charcoal, and began writing in his ‘Journal’.
In March 1955, his first individual exhibition was held at Galerie Lucien Durand in Paris, presenting oil paintings on various surfaces. The pieces showcased different techniques: scraped drips of thick paint, glued fragments of canvas and splashes of paint. His first exhibition at Galerie Daniel Cordier in March 1957 presented his ink Spirales drawings, glued fragments of paper – his Papiers choisis –, fragments of illustrations cut out from recipe magazines or La vie des bêtes. This period marked a major turning point in his work.
Bernard Réquichot’s work moved through different stages at lightning speed, from religious drawings to the series of large Spirales or Papiers Choisis, to his famous Reliquaires, large wooden boxes filled with various materials (bones, paint, knives, pieces of wood, etc.). Réquichot loved to use the objects around him in his workshop or nearby stores, such as knives, brushes and even polystyrene curtain rings found in the Printemps or BHV department stores with his friends Yolande Fièvre and Dado, two artists also supported by Daniel Cordier.
In 1972, the critic Alain Jouffroy who that year published the artist’s Écrits, dedicated a ‘Lettre noire’ to his work and referred to his marginalisation in the art world: “He screamed, he complained, he wailed, he came undone, he fought with himself, he threw himself in, he rejected himself, he crushed himself, he fell down, he lost himself, he got stuck, finally, he exposed himself, open and ripped apart, to the blank canvas. For Réquichot, painting was a conscious manifestation of energy and thought, an opening to real life: his inner experience evokes that of Artaud, Bataille and all tempestuous minds which refuse to draw the spirit into ratiocination and beauty [1]”.
Bernard Réquichot’s work is housed in the following collections: the MNAM-Pompidou, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Antoine de Galbert Foundation in Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix in Sables d’Olonne and the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain in Saint-Étienne Métropole. In recent years, he has also been the subject of individual exhibitions at Galerie Alain Marfaron and Galerie Baudoin Lebon in Paris.
The MNAM-Centre Georges Pompidou is organising his first solo exhibition in 2024, from 3 April to 2 September (curated by Christian Briend).
[1] Alain Jouffroy, Lettre noire, 1972 published in Bernard Réquichot, Les Écrits de Bernard Réquichot, Bruxelles, Éditions La Connaissance, 1973