Jean Miotte
Born in 1926.
Died in 2016.
After studying mathematics, he discovered painting during his military service in 1946. He subsequently attended the studios of Othon Friesz and Ossip Zadkine, and went on to develop a distinctive body of work situated between lyrical abstraction, Art Informel and Tachism. The Museum of Modern Art in New York also lists him as a French artist born in 1926 and holds a work by him in its collection.
Miotte produced his first abstract painting in 1950. His visual language was formed through immediate gesture, movement and colour: the canvas became the site of a pictorial action in which impulse and balance coexist. Dance, the performing arts and music nourished this exploration.
His early figurative works often depict dancers; later, he pursued a non-figurative painting marked by choreographic rhythm and the energy of gesture.
He exhibited at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles from 1953 onwards, participating regularly, and his career acquired an international dimension during the 1950s and 1960s. He spent time in the United States, exhibited in Europe and Asia, and also worked on paper. In 1971, he began incorporating unprepared ecru canvas into his compositions.
In 1991, his prints were included in *Mémoire de la liberté*, a project presented at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. Among the works recorded by the Fondation Jean Miotte are *Sud* (1991), a large-format acrylic on canvas, as well as several untitled canvases from the 1990s and 2000s.
