Pierrette Bloch
A prominent French Post-War artist, whose career spans over sixty years, Pierrette Bloch is known for her formal abstractions that incorporate a variety of materials and processes, including ink, paper, mesh, and horsehair. Often incorporating elemental forms such as dots, lines, curls and other repetitive shapes, Bloch began as a student of André Lhote and Henri Goetz, with her first exhibition held at Mai Gallery, Paris in 1951. Incorporating everyday materials into her rhythmic compositions, her work explores the boundaries of drawing, sculpture, emptiness, and spontaneity using techniques of stamping, scraping, and other gestural movements. The primary use of black and white is characteristic of Bloch’s unique style, only occasionally permeated by earthy browns. Lines upon lines of smudged black marks appear in some of her more well known pieces, like endless counts or notation. Tangles of horse hair are arranged against white paper and knitted into mesh tapestries in some of her sculptural works, which evoke the same complex visual language as her painted ink pieces.
Pierrette Bloch’s internationally-renowned work has been exhibited in museums and galleries for over sixty years including Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France, Musée Bellerive, Zurich, Switzerland, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, …
A prominent French Post-War artist, whose career spans over sixty years, Pierrette Bloch is known for her formal abstractions that incorporate a variety of materials and processes, including ink, paper, mesh, and horsehair. Often incorporating elemental forms such as dots, lines, curls and other repetitive shapes, Bloch began as a student of André Lhote and Henri Goetz, with her first exhibition held at Mai Gallery, Paris in 1951. Incorporating everyday materials into her rhythmic compositions, her work explores the boundaries of drawing, sculpture, emptiness, and spontaneity using techniques of stamping, scraping, and other gestural movements. The primary use of black and white is characteristic of Bloch’s unique style, only occasionally permeated by earthy browns. Lines upon lines of smudged black marks appear in some of her more well known pieces, like endless counts or notation. Tangles of horse hair are arranged against white paper and knitted into mesh tapestries in some of her sculptural works, which evoke the same complex visual language as her painted ink pieces.
Pierrette Bloch’s internationally-renowned work has been exhibited in museums and galleries for over sixty years including Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France, Musée Bellerive, Zurich, Switzerland, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Brussels, Belgium, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan and Musée de Beaux Arts, Mons, Belgium, among others. In 2005 the Pro-MAHJ Foundation awarded her the Maratier prize.
