Born in Brussels in 1927
Sans titre, 1974
Watercolor and Indian ink on old manuscript paper
Signed in the upper right corner Alechinsky
Dated lower right 1974
Dimensions: 23.2 x 17.8 cm
Provenance :
Private collection, France
“To draw is to question,” wrote Pierre ALECHINSKY
"In the early 1960s, he developed a taste for collecting and discovered the splendor of old papers, which inspired him to dream. He made use of beauty and banality: letters, accounts, memoirs. Fragments and scraps of lives. Alechinsky immersed himself in these stories, honoring them by enhancing them. To these writings from afar, skillfully or clumsily traced by others, anonymous figures who have become familiar, Alechinsky adds: he diverts their meaning, he bends it, he invents it. He revels in the delight of reuse. He practices enrichment with relish. He starts from nothing, from so little, and saves by saturating. His very free brushwork sketches an improbable music, slowing down the echo of the initial writing".
Yves Peyré, La main prise de révélation in Alechinsky Dessin de cinq décennies, exhibition catalog of the Galerie d'Art Graphique du Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, MNAM, Paris, Éditions du Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2024, p. 17
The Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, has in its collections an important group of drawings by Alechinsky on ancient manuscripts.
These works have been the subject of several donations by the artist to the museum over the years.