From Math to Action
Jean Miotte studied mathematics, then war and tuberculosis threw him into drawing. He frequented the workshops of Friesz and Zadkine, painted his first abstract canvas around 1950, exhibited at Réalités Nouvelles in 1953. Jazz, dance, Balanchine, later Zen and calligraphy nourish a lyricism that wants movement more than the object-painting.
Paris, New York, China
Prize of the Ford Foundation in 1961, workshops in New York and Hamburg, friendship with Rothko and Motherwell: white becomes light. In the 1970s, acrylic replaces mashed oil; formats grow; sometimes color forms the background and black is written on top. In 1980, he was among the first Westerners to be exhibited in People’s China. Your collection (97 × 130 cm, blue-black-red pallets, pink, white-black-blue oil) covers precisely this maturity.
A dance stopped
Miotte dies in 2016 in the Var. The Miotte Foundation and the galleries (Almine Rech, Diane de Polignac) reread a work too often placed behind the most media of lyricism. « Movement is my life », he said: each painting is a choreography without narrative.
