“Les Désirs Dénoués” is an exhibition that revolves around a skillful collection of works by the great surrealist André Masson (1896-1987), in dialogue with one of the latest series of drawings by Roberto Ruspoli (1972), an Italian artist residing in Paris who works within the French tradition.
By André Masson, one of the most significant French artists, to whom the Centre Pompidou in Metz is currently dedicating a major retrospective, we present a diverse body of works capable of illuminating his various interests through the use of drawing. An instrument that, especially during the many turbulent phases of his life, proved fundamental.
During the wars above all: the First World War, in which he participated, marked him indelibly. He would often return to rework, in lyrical calligraphy, the trauma of violence. He was then in Spain when the civil war began, deciding to return to France, to Normandy, but by then all of Europe was on the brink of the abyss and, despite being convinced he did not want to leave the old Continent, he moved with a large part of the Surrealist group to the United States.
During this phase of continuous displacement, drawing was the only form of expression for Masson, but even upon his return to France, after the American period, so laden with consequences, it remained a primary source of expression. Capable of conveying the cornerstones of his poetics: the processing of wartime violence, erotic impulse, lyrical abstraction, graphic art, theater. Cornerstones that in the exhibition we have sought to represent through works such as Les sequestres d’Altona or The Legend of the Golden Ass (1960).
For Roberto Ruspoli as well, drawing is a primary language of expression, which fits by formal quality and inspiration into the French tradition of the twentieth century, with a gaze directed both toward Greek classicism and the elegance of Japanese art. “My work fits into the French tradition of the line as spontaneous, immediate, and poetic expression, while drawing its inspiration from classical roots,” states the artist. “Therefore, drawing is a form of unraveled (dénouée) writing; the draftsman does nothing but take the line that writing knots in order to create words, sentences, meaning; he unknots it to recompose it in the stroke that possesses a synthetic value that writing does not have.”