English
As much black as white
Mireille Martin is a French painter working in geometric abstraction. A founding member of the Collectif Art Concret — Normandie, she lives and works near Rouen.
The rule
Every painting contains one black square, one white square — and exactly as much black as white. That single constraint has held for more than ten years, and from it she draws a repertoire of variations that never repeat.
For me, geometry has always been a source of poetry and a pretext for escape.
Criticism
Mireille Martin took to painting after keeping sketchbooks, in which she would cut out geometric shapes with scissors. Fascinated by the Abbey of Fontevraud and the magic of its black and white stone, she intentionally oriented her own painting style toward stark motifs and basic “non-colours”, which she tirelessly explores in her series Allers-Retours by opposing contrasts.
Drawn to Abstract Expressionism, the artist works in the spirit of Geometric Abstraction. Assembling well constructed and radically simple elements allows her to divide and to accentuate space with black and white solid fills, whilst simultaneously playing on right angles and the diagonal line. Going beyond merely a strict mathematical representation, she demonstrates with extreme sobriety and very sparing means — in both her acrylic and Indian ink paintings — her ability to create formal perfection through astonishing plays of balance and simple contrasts of non-colours.
Her trips to China have also been decisive in her artistic career, which is very marked by Chinese philosophy. Her approach is as much an aesthetic reflection as a genuine pictorial meditation.
— Francine Bunel-Malras, art historian
Work and enquiries
The catalogue holds 108 works: acrylics on canvas and Indian ink on paper. All of them are available directly from the artist; prices on request.