Galerie Karsten Greve

Lovis Corinth

Galerie Karsten Greve is honored to present its first exhibition devoted to the German painter Lovis Corinth (1858-1925), shown for the first time in a gallery in France. The works on display highlight his late period through a group of eleven pieces - a work on paper from 1918, a self-portrait from 1922 and nine floral still lifes created between 1915 and 1925. Drawn from the Greve Collection, they invite us to rediscover this visionary artist, acclaimed during his lifetime but whose legacy was overshadowed by the socio-political turmoil of the 20th century. Lovis Corinth's work does not lend itself to stylistic definition - sometimes expressionist, sometimes impressionistic, the artist merges currents in a kaleidoscope of inspirations. Born in 1858 in Tapiau, East Prussia, Corinth witnessed the Franco-Prussian war and the unification of Germany. Sensitive to art from an early age, he received a broad artistic training of more than twelve years: first at the Academy of Fine Arts in Königsberg (1876-80), then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (1880-84) and, finally, in Paris, where he studied with William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian (1884-87). When he arrived in the French capital in 1884, he discovered a Paris troubled by the constant change of regimes, the defeat against Prussia, the social and economic crises. Memories of the bloody Paris Commune and its civil violence haunt the memory of a society destabilized by the urban reorganization undertaken by Baron Haussmann. Despite this, Corinth excelled in Paris. In the second half of the 19th century, a young artist had to conform to the academic system in order to be successful, the honors of the Paris Salon being the high point. Corinth exhibited there and received an honorable mention in 1890 for a Pietà - he passed this rite of passage but did not stop there.

Sculptures et gouaches - Loïc Le Groumellec

«These "writing-signs" treated for thirty years without real effectiveness, become today the center of my work, allowing me to affirm the concerns which were always mine: to be registered in a history of pictorial art which refers to the minimalism, to the monochrome, to a form of radicalism which induces a distrust, to see a rejection of any narration by the image.»

- Loïc Le Groumellec, 2019.

The Karsten Greve Gallery is pleased to announce a new solo exhibition by French artist Loïc Le Groumellec. Entitled Sculptures and Gouaches, this exhibition presents a set of his brand new writings on paper in dialogue with 19 new sculptures from the series Megalithe et maison, in orbicular diorite, marble / lacquered wood.

During his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, Loïc Le Groumellec discovered in the institutional archives a set of lithographs depicting megaliths - a structure he knows well. Born in Vannes, he grew up in the Gulf of Morbihan rich in mystical vestiges of the Neolithic. The enigma of the mural inscriptions of the cairn of Gavrinis, which remain undeciphered to this day, the dolmens, the menhirs, the wild nature of his native Brittany nourish his imagination, as for generations of artists and writers before him.