Noël Dolla

French artist Noël Dolla, born in Nice, France in 1945, emerged in the late 1960s as the youngest member of the Supports/Surfaces movement, which focused on painting while simultaneously rejecting the status quo, postwar Western art establishment. Dolla literally and ideologically deconstructed painting, using materials like dishtowels, pillowcases, rolls of muslin, and handkerchiefs to create patterned and dyed abstractions. Repurposing everyday items, Dolla helped expand the vocabulary of abstract painting, though his practice didn’t stop at painting. In the 1970s, Dolla experimented with finger-painted monochromes, land-art involving colored dots on beaches and mountains, minuscule fishing-lure sculptures, and complex installations using yards of unrolled muslin fabric.

Dolla has been exhibiting since the late 1960s and has exhibited his work widely and internationally. Solo exhibitions include Ceylon Gallery in Geneva, Luxembourg, and Paris, Galerie des Multiples in Paris, Bourgoin-Jallieu Museum in France, MAMCO in Geneva, Contemporary Art Space Gustave Fayet in France, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna, Cultural Institute Italo-French in Bologna, among many others.