Discover or rediscover the major exhibitions of Galerice ETC thanks to virtual visits produced by Artland Paris. A look back at two historic shows held the gallery this past year:

• CLAIRE CHESNIER "Le ciel aussi est un fracas"
  From 31 January to 21 March 2020

** Link to explore the exhibition via a virtual visit: https://www.artland.com/exhibitions/solo-exhibition-ad30af/embed **

This first exhibition of the young French artist Claire Chesnier at Galerie ETC brings together eleven works, made especially for this solo show.

Claire Chesnier, born in 1986 in Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme), is a former student of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where she graduated in 2011. Spotted by the fashion designer and collector Agnès B. in 2012, she is exhibiting her first solo exhibition "Fragment d'une déposition" at Galerie ETC.

Her work echos Shanshui painters as well as abstract art. Using a technique similar to ink washing, Claire Chesnier mixes colours with finesse. The artist herself describes her work as "a light depth of colour and time", leaving nuance in her poetic and evocative powers.

• CHARLES POLLOCK
  From 11 October to 1 December 2019

** Link to explore the exhibition via a virtual visit:  https://www.artland.com/exhibitions/solo-exhibition-5ba998 **

Galerie ETC pays homage to the artist Charles Pollock, older brother of the famous Jackson Pollock. Not as well known, he was nonetheless a prolific artist who dedicated almost twenty years to Social Realism. With this solo exhibition, it is the very first time that abstract works in the Color Field movement of the 1960s are exhibited in Paris.

The eldest of five siblings, Charles became interested early on in the work of Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, two Mexican mural painters. In 1926 he left Los Angeles for New York, where Jackson, his younger brother joined him a few years later. Together they were taught by Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Influenced by Benton, Charles devoted himself to Social Realism over a period of nearly twenty years before moving onto abstraction in the mid-1940s.

From 1950 to the end of the 1960s, while still continuing to paint, he taught calligraphy, printmaking, and graphic design at Michigan State College. Two sabbatical years marked his painting and career: Mexico, from 1955-56 - it was upon his return from this artistically successful break, that he learnt of the death of his brother Jackson - and Rome, from 1962-63. In 1971 he relocated to Paris with his wife and daughter, where he spent the last seventeen years of his life and died on 8 May 1988.

From 1954, Charles Pollock's work has oscillated between a certain lyricism and a coloured abstraction close to Color Field. Initially fascinated by calligraphy, which he taught all his life, he drew inspiration from this discipline where he affirmed his taste for cosmic symbols and hermetic signs which appear throughout his canvases. The forms then take flight, the colour becomes deep and dense before gushing out, bright and poetic.

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Galerie ETC is an art gallery specialising in delicate and minimalist works. Representing experienced painters and sculptors of the second half of the twentieth century, as well as emerging artists, this family-run business, started by Maurice, Pierre-Henri, and Thomas Benhamou in 2019, goes beyond anecdote and explanation to showcase works that are a result of the search of a genuine aesthetic.

Galerie ETC
28 rue Saint-Claude 75003 Paris
Open Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 7pm
https://www.galerie-etc.com/

Press contact
Paula Wateau
pwateau@communicart.fr