Marcel Pouget Biography
Marcel Pouget (1923 - 1985) was born in 1923 in Oran, Algeria, where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d'Oran. In 1946 he was accepted to the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, however, after only a week he decided to leave the school because he found it too conventional. Paris became his home for the rest of his life, and he was soon involved in the avant-garde circle, developing strong affinities with the Abstract Expressionists and later, with the COBRA group, which would pioneer in Europe the development of a type of informal art with highly expressive characteristics. The group, formed in 1948 by Alechinsky, Appel, Corneille and Jorn, was a reactionary movement that sought free expression of the unconscious unhindered by the intellect. The motifs were comparable to American action painters, but differed in COBRA's use of strange fantastical imagery, often relating to Norse mythology or folklore.
Pouget's works are identified as "hallucinatory visions", his style is in fact both romantic and desperate. His infinite creative energy led him to adopt a mystical attitude towards his vision of the world and his work, identifying the artist as a true "prophet".
In 1965 the style was defined as Nouvelle Figuration, which he describes as "defigurative psychological painting", producing a subjective language of figurative symbols.
In 1948 Pouget held his first of many solo exhibitions in major galleries, as well as avant-garde salons. His works were exhibited throughout the 60s and 70s until the retrospectives dedicated to him in 2004 at the Espace Paul Rebeyrolle and in 2006 at the Galerie Ariel, Paris.
