Rodolphe Proverbio

Overview
Rodolphe Proverbio
“I grew up in weaving workshops, full of threads and light, and it was quite naturally that I had the idea of weaving space with light. I remember very clearly the excitement of those first times when I tried these luminous, yet very rudimentary, brushes. (…) In this ‘blind’ drawing, is it the hand that guides the mind, or the mind that guides the hand?”

In recent years, Proverbio continued his research with another series of works with what he called the Aesthetics of Water: photographs of simple geometric elements taken through wa- ter. Proverbio finds in these deformations an inexhaustible mine of organic forms, seen sur- reptitiously in the reflections of the water. In a further exploration of these organic and kinetic forms, Proverbio has in recent years been creating mixed-media collages. Set against an end- less matt black background, like his photograms, these coloful forms ooze and burst across the surface, remininscent too of forms that one can find in nature. 

Works
  • serie esthétique de l'eau # 2
    serie esthétique de l'eau # 2
  • serie esthétique de l'eau # 8
    serie esthétique de l'eau # 8
  • Lumière et Eau
    Lumière et Eau
  • peinture de lumière
    peinture de lumière
  • Tissage de Lumière
    Tissage de Lumière
  • Lumière et Eau
    Lumière et Eau
  • EVA Naissante
    EVA Naissante
  • La QUÊTE des Nuages
    La QUÊTE des Nuages
Biography
Rodolphe Proverbio

 

Born in 1938 in Lyon, Rodolphe Proverbio is the son of a silk fabric designer. In 1963, he decided to leave the family business to pursue an artistic career, based on the photogram technique. Proverbio was part of the French post-war movement of experimental photography Libre Expression (Free Expression), exhibiting with artists such as Etienne Bertrand Weill, Jean-Claude Gautrand and Jean Dieuzaide. Proverbio’s work expresses in many ways the Zeitgeist of the Parisian art scene between 1955 and 1965, where geometrical abstraction and non-figurative art coexist together with Op art and Kinetic art. Just as for his predeces- sors Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy, Proverbio’s working material is light, but in his search for maximum purity of the trace, he insists even more on movement, notably of the body.

Rodolphe Proverbio’s works can be found in collections such as Musée de la Photographie Arles (FR) and in the Cabinet des Estampes de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (FR), as well as many private collections. His work has been exhibited worldwide, and in 2019 in the exhibition, “Le diable au corps. Quand l’Op Art électrise le cinéma”, at the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice (FR).

Exhibitions
Publications
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