Jean Starck (born in 1948)

Lot 456 - Jean Starck (born in 1948)
Oil on wood, self portrait of the artist
Signed and dated 1990
Dimensions: H: 157; W: 87 cm
A major figure of the French underground, he co-founded the "Art Cloche" movement in 1979, which was born of a revolt by homeless people who took over a disused building in the 14th arrondissement of Paris where bombs were stored during the last war. Immediately a first wave of artists without studios joined the initial occupants. Workshops were created as other artists from abroad came to settle in search of a place to paint.
This first movement of post modern art occupation by the squat will give place during practically one decade to a new heterogeneous, poetic, protesting, insolent art to which Jean Starck will be plainly associated. Will be thus created the first works of primitive urban art.
Jean Starck uses a technique called cut up which consists in taking fragments from the works of other squatters and assembling them like a patchwork. Thanks to the dissonance resulting from the variety of styles and materials he reduces to nothing the unity of conception dear to traditional artists. The materials used are of course modest because they generally come from recycling, the artist being a reunifier of society's waste.