Jean Sanglar

Upside-Down Blues

1976

Jean Sanglar was born in France in 1926. He draws with taste and talent from an early age, however, his family will only consider this a mere hobby. After studying law, he later took up a position in Paris at the Ministry of the Navy, where he spent his entire professional career. Nevertheless, Sanglar painted his entire life. He frequents the “underground” artistic circles in New York and London, where he meets Francis Bacon and other noteworthy characters. Many pieces were discovered after his death in 1996, including an important series about the Holocaust. In the 1960s, he was frequently exhibited in Paris, where he was awarded a silver medal. Of note, in August of 1968, he met Picasso at a joint exhibition. He expresses his pain in facing the reality of the world when he states, “I don’t pretend to be a witness. I don’t paint to say something; it’s a job, not a hobby.” In his work, rigor remains the watchword, it is present in all his constructions where it is characterized by the use of space in large flat areas of uniform colors, harmonized in different geometric planes leaving a significant space to the universe in which his characters evolve. “I’m not interested in the finished canvas. It is the next one that is important!" An assertive talent that presents to us a humanity that is both surrealist and grotesque. The rhythm is lively and violent; the strokes of pastel or knife marks incise a layer of still fresh paint, winding into endless hanks to give birth to mysterious golems with hollow orbits, opening onto the world a hallucinated haunting look. Expressive facial expressions, whitish bodies, gigantic hands, characters in strangely offbeat situations, in this fascinating universe that leaves on questioning. A world of unbridled freedom, derision, from which deformed bodies spring, sometimes lying on a beach in the sun, playing the trumpet or double bass, spinning, cruelly entangling and drawing the reality of a tragic-comic world. Sangla joins, in his unique style, the expressionist universes of an Edvard Munch, a Lucian Freud, an Egon Schiele or Francis Bacon. He accomplishes this through a sharp look at the world around him. Today, through his work, we have the privilege to discover the fantastic Universe of Sangla.