DIALOGUE: Sulage and Jankulovski
Exhibition of paintings and graphics
7-21 October 2021 | OSTEN Gallery
Pierre SOULAGES
Born in Rodez, Aveyron, in 1919, Soulages is also known as "the painter of black," owing to his interest in the colour "both as a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens a mental field all its own." He sees light as a work material; striations of the black surface of his paintings enable him to reflect light, allowing the black to come out of darkness and into brightness, thus becoming a luminous colour.
Soulages began to gain recognition in the United States in the 1950s. His works were included in the two major exhibitions of European artists, Younger European Painters at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum (1953) and The New Decade: 22 European Painters and Sculptors at the Museum of Modern Art (1955) in New York. In 1979, Soulages was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
From 1987 to 1994, he produced 104 stained-glass windows for the Romanesque Abbey church Sainte-Foy in Conques (Aveyron, France). Soulages is the first living artist invited to exhibit at the state Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg and later with the Tretyakov Gallery of Moscow (2001).
In 2007, the Musée Fabre of Montpellier devoted an entire room to Soulages, presenting a donation he made to the city. It included twenty paintings dating from 1951 to 2006, among which were major works from the 1960s, two large "plus-black" works from the 1970s, and several large polyptychs. A retrospective was held at the Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou from October 2009 to March 2010. In 2010, the Museum of the City of Mexico presented a retrospective of paintings that also included an interview-video with the artist.
In 2014, Musée Soulages opened in Rodez, France, Soulages' hometown, as a place to permanently display his works and to house temporary contemporary exhibitions. Soulages donated five hundred works. The paintings represent all stages of his work, from post-war oils to a phase of work he calls Outrenoir. It was the most complete display of work from his first 30 years.
In September 2019, the Levy Gorvy Gallery in New York holds a major exhibition ahead of the retrospective at the Louvre Museum in December celebrating his 100th birthday.
MICKO Mice Jankulovski
1954 Born in Slivovo, Ohrid, Macedonia
Graduated from the Faculty of Architecture
University „St. Cyril & Methodius” Skopje
Lives and works in Skopje, North Macedonia
As an artist, for decades he has been publicly present through multiple artistic disciplines (cartoons, painting on glass, animation film, palindromes…), while consistently dedicated in researching and creating in painting and drawing.
His biography features more than fifty solo exhibitions in N. Macedonia and abroad and notable presentations on important international exhibitions and Biennials (Larnaca, St. Petersburg, Thessaloniki, Turin, Florence, Venice, Larnaca, Varna ... – just to mention a few).
He is a receiver of many awards including: Best Artist Award (Larnaca Biennale 2021); Rembrandt Award for Excellence in Art for 2020 (by WAVA); El Greco Award for Best Artist (Art Thessaloniki 2019, Greece); Lorenzo Il Magnifico Award for Lifetime Achievement (XII Florence Biennale 2019, Italy); Artist of the World (Larnaca Biennale 2018, Cyprus); GRAND PRIX (19th International Print Biennial 2017, Varna, Bulgaria); GRAND PRIX (1997) and two Special Prizes (1985, 1971) on the World Gallery of Cartoon, Skopje; City of Skopje Award “13th November” (1985) ... and many others.
Besides numerous articles, books and catalogues during his professional work, several monographs about Jankulovski’s work were published, with reviews by domestic, but also foreign art critics and internationally renowned art historians such as Aleksandr Borovsky, Russia; Enzo di Martino, Italy; Prof. Manos Stefanidis, Greece; Dr. Melanie Zeferrino, Italy; Zsolt Petrányi PhD, Hungary; Denitsa Yaneva PhD, Bulgaria, as well as colleagues-artists Maty Grunberg, Israel, Olga Tobreluts, Russia and the diplomat, writer and poet Milan Jazbec, Slovenia.
Jankulovski is included in the anthology “Macedonian Caricature” by Vladimir Velickovski (1994) and in the anthology “Visual Arts in Macedonia – XX century”, Book II - Multimedia Art by Sonja Abadzieva (2017).