A one-off exhibition to mark Jean-François Jaeger’s 90th birthday and his 66 years at the helm of the Galerie Jaeger Bucher.

19th November 2013 – 25th January 2014

To mark the 90th birthday of Jean-François Jaeger, the gallery which now bears his name is to host an exhibition celebrating his 66 years as a gallery owner. It will look back over his career through the prism of the artists he championed, the long-running relationships he forged with art critics and institutions and the numerous collectors who learnt to trust the perspicacity of his artistic judgment - collectors with whom he constantly sought to create a dialogue right throughout his long career as a gallery owner – a dialogue which continues to this day.

A man with a mission: Jean-François Jaeger

By going back in time and embarking on a long, meticulous examination of its archives, the Jaeger Bucher gallery has been able to retrace the epic journey of a truly extraordinary gallery owner. Jean-François Jaeger took over the management of the gallery in 1947, one year after the death of Jeanne Bucher. The young owner managed to maintain and even build on the reputation of this iconic gallery by respecting its dedication to artistic excellence and its passionate commitment to the art world, whilst simultaneously being very much ahead of his time in the identification of trends which now, more than 60 years on, are an integral part of our lives and times.

Rather than simply stacking up memories from exhibitions past, Matter and Memory: the Patriarch's Realm takes up the challenge of plotting the course of a long career by following the creative development of the avant-garde artists that Jean-François Jaeger promoted, as well as highlighting his precocious perceptiveness and characteristic humility, which is seen in the motto that best expresses how he lives his life, ‘Nothing ‘belongs to me and I belong to everything’.

An essential exhibition

The exhibition takes its name from a 1939 work by Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, which serves to underline its key themes, the relationship between body and mind and between the mind and the passage of time. These are illustrated both in the way in which the artists’ works exhibited in the gallery demonstrate an undisputable link between their media and the artistic experimentations and innovations of their times and by the way in which the memory that gives them life, which cannot be separated from how they are perceived, weaves the past into the present. The modern-day perception of these works extends and revives this memory, since these fundamentally free works are unconstrained by belonging – to space, time, artistic school or movement, unless it be that they belong to the perception of anyone who can fully appreciate their true worth.

Organized by Jean-François Jaeger’s daughter, Véronique Jaeger, who took over the running of the gallery’s two Parisian exhibition spaces a few years ago, Matter and Memory: the Patriarch's Realm is both a tribute to a pioneering, talented and passionate defender of the arts and a chance to rediscover the works of the artists and movements that have marked the history of art in Paris from the post-war period to the present day.

A gallery owner devoted to serving artists - and their art

 The Galerie Jaeger Bucher’s new premises in the Marais, 5 & 7 rue de Saintonge, Paris 3 hosts works from:

- The mainstays of the gallery: Maria Helena VIEIRA DA SILVA, Arpad SZENES, Nicolas de STAEL, Mark TOBEY, Hans REICHEL, Roger BISSIERE and Jean DUBUFFET, each of whom is represented by a selection of museum-quality works from various periods which have been gathered together for this very special exhibition-birthday celebration.

- Artists whose works were exhibited for the first time in France by the gallery and/or who exhibited works at the gallery during key periods in their personal artistic development: Louise NEVELSON, Asger JORN, Miodrag DADO, Gérard FROMANGER, Magdalena ABAKANOWICZ, Louis le BROCQUY, Michel GERARD, Fred DEUX, Arthur Luiz PIZA, Paul REBEYROLLE and Felix ROZEN  are all represented by an iconic work of art that is particularly representative of the period during which they were exhibited in the gallery.

- Young artists from the gallery’s earlier days who are less well-known today but who have been championed by the gallery since the 1950s. This exhibition-birthday celebration will offer the chance to rediscover the work of Louis NALLARD, Wilfrid MOSER and Fermin AGUAYO, who are represented by must-see examples of their art.

- Public Art artists, each one of whom is represented in this exhibition by a major art work: Gérard SINGER, Jean AMADO, Dani KARAVAN, Jean-Paul PHILIPPE, Mark di SUVERO.

A modern-day heritage

The Galerie Jeanne-Bucher’s original exhibition space at 53 rue de Seine, Paris 6, will take a fresh look at three remarkable areas of artistic endeavour, art which broke new ground back in the 1960s. This exhibition is the perfect opportunity to bring the masterpieces of this period back into the public eye, along with artists and works that have joined the gallery more recently, thus enabling the establishment of a bridge between tradition and modern times and facilitating a more in-depth examination of these fields:

- Tribal Art, masterpieces from Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, stone sculptures from Pre-Columbian Mexico and Mayan and Dogon sculptures.

- The theme of Espace en Demeure is revisited through the works of Magdalena ABAKANOWICZ, Maria Helena VIEIRA DA SILVA, Louise NEVELSON and developed further by the work of two contemporary artists, Fabienne VERDIER and Zarina HASHMI.

- The lure of the Orient with, amongst others, Mark TOBEY, the Taoist Grand Master CHEN Yung-Sheng, the Japanese artist and master kimono painter, Kunihiko MORIGUCHI, Yang JIECHANG, the Cantonese artist who first came to international attention through the seminal exhibition ‘Magicians of the Earth', not to forget the amazing Dreamstone purchased from that great lover of the mineral world, Roger Caillois.

This event will also feature descriptions and photographs of exhibitions dating from the 60s, which will offer a real insight into the striking events and exhibitions that have punctuated the life of the gallery and which continue to the present day.

Galerie Jaeger Bucher
5 & 7 rue de Saintonge, Paris 3e

From Tuesday to Saturday 11am - 7pm
www.galeriejaegerbucher.com

Galerie Jeanne-Bucher
53 rue de Seine, Paris 6e

From Tuesday to Friday :
9h30am-1pm and 2pm-6h30pm,
Saturday : 10am-12:30am and 2:30pm-6pm
www.jeanne-bucher.com