Expositions
MONOGRAPHIC EXHIBITIONS
Monographic exhibitions are marked with an asterisk (*). R. Lapoujade took part in various Salons, Salons de Mai, d’Automne and Réalités Nouvelles and group exhibitions in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, Australia, Japan and the United States.
Click on the exhibition catalog for an enlarged version and, if necessary, additional information.
1947 – R. Lapoujade, Painting and drawings*, Galerie Jeanne Castel Paris, figurative works. Catalog prefaced by Waldemar-George
1949 – Lapoujade*, Chardin Gallery, Paris Editions du Seuil presents 50 drawings by Robert Lapoujade. Three sets make up this exhibition of drawings executed in silverpoint on parchment, accompanied by an autograph text signed by the writer represented : 29 personality portraits, Bachelard, Bataille, Breton, Sartre, Mauriac, Éluard…), eleven illustrations for Les Voies de Petite Communication by L. Pauwels (Seuil 1949) and various works. The exhibition was resumed in Lille, Galerie Evrard.
1950 – Pretexts and formal painting*, Galerie Mai, Paris
First exhibition of abstract art, accompanied by a manifesto that takes on the dimensions of an essay, Le Mal à voir. This period is marked by research from the ‘Informe’.
1950 – Takes part in the Salon de Mai, Paris
1950 – Water Games by Lapoujade*, Galerie Marcel Evrard*, Paris
1952 – Lapoujade, Compositions*, Babylon Gallery, Paris
“The canvases presented have no intentional title, although all proceed from intentions or pretexts. Some, however, are subject to an initial idea, linked to a construction theme and only target it.” – Lapoujade
1952 – Lapoujade, Hell and the Mine*, Galerie Arnaud, Paris
Exhibition presented with a manifesto text by Robert Lapoujade. It continued in Milan, Florence and Turin accompanied by conferences.
1956 – Robert Lapoujade*, World House Galleries, New York
World House Galleries was founded by Herbert Mayer, Sr. in 1953 in New York. The gallery operated until 1968. The World House Galleries represented an eclectic group of European artists such as Jean Dubuffet, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee and Georgio Morandi…
Preface Francis Jeanson
1959 – Lapoujade, The heart of the matter, “Eroticism and non-figuration”*, Galerie du Musée de Poche, Paris
The twenty-two paintings deal with eroticism and torture.
1959 – Autour des objets*, Galerie Numaga, Chaux-de-Fonds, Suisse
1959 – Autour de thèmes érotiques*, Galerie Arlet, Monaco
1959 – Around objects*, Numaga Gallery, Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
1960 – Publishes drawings in Action poétique n°12, an issue devoted to the Algerian war
1961 – Lapoujade, Painting on the theme of riots*, Galerie Pierre Domec, Paris
“One day, said Marx, there will be no more painters : just men who will paint. We are a long way from that. But yet Lapoujade is this strange contradiction : he is, with a few others of the same age, the one who reduced painting to the sumptuous austerity of its essence; yet, in the midst of the human presences that are embodied in his canvas, he is the first not to privilege himself; painter, he tears off the mask of the artist by his painting; there are only men left and this one, without prerogatives, one among us, the painter denying himself by the splendor of his work” (…) Jean-Paul Sartre, “A painter without privileges” preface to the exhibition Paintings on the theme of the Riots, Triptych on torture, Hiroshima, text taken from Situations IV, Gallimard, 1964
1961 – Robert Lapoujade, Nudes, Riots*, Galerie La Hune, Paris
“The artist shows himself naked. (…) The result is these black and hurried shadows which flee under a sooty sky where stand up in an ultimate claim (Riots), these landscapes where the imagination plays with four times four corners, these nudes that promise the evidence of the flesh and, even better, this untied writing where both our being and our destiny can be read. » Preface, Maurice Nadeau 1961- A new Figuration, Mathias Fels Gallery, Paris Preface Jean -Louis Ferrier: ‘If we have chosen the term new figuration to (…) bind (the artists) knowing well how restrictive it may be at first glance, it is above all with the aim of characterizing the painting which, turning away altogether from imagery and false transcendences, manages to base our relationships with ourselves and with the outside world on a more essential objectivity'”.
Preface, Maurice Nadeau
1961- Une nouvelle Figuration, Galerie Mathias Fels, Paris
Préface Jean -Louis Ferrier : ‘Si nous avons choisi le terme nouvelle figuration pour (…) lier (les artistes) sachant bien ce que celui-ci peut avoir de restrictif au premier abord, c’est avant tout dans le but de caractériser la peinture qui, se détournant tout ensemble de l’imagerie et des fausses transcendances, parvient à fonder nos relations à nous-mêmes et au monde extérieur selon une plus essentielle objectivité’.
1962 – Lapoujade*, Traghetto Gallery, Venice
1963 – Lapoujade, 25 drawings on the theme of the nude*, Galerie Pierre Domec, Paris
1965 – Lapoujade, Portraits and Compositions*, Pierre Domec Gallery, Paris
Preface Marguerite Duras: ‘It was Kandinsky, I believe, who said that the paint is already in the tubes before being on the canvas. Where is Sartre before passing so extraordinarily on Lapoujade’s canvas? He is, we are, in Lapoujade integrated, we circulate in Lapoujade. I have never had as strong a feeling as before this painter, the feeling of being a physical, osmotic, soluble phenomenon…’ Marguerite Duras (reprinted in Le Monde exterior, Ed. P.O.L.)
1966- Participates in the exhibition Expositions et Rencontres, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Neuchâtel, Switzerland
1968 – Robert Lapoujade, Things seen*, Pierre Domec Gallery, Paris
Exhibition on the events of May 1968. After this exhibition, his pictorial activity is reduced to the benefit of cinema and writing and he only participates in collective exhibitions.
1985 – ROBERT LAPOUJADE Retrospective*, BPI, Miramas
Presentation Olivier Revault d’Allones: ‘Who would like to retrace the stages of Lapoujade’s work would quickly realize that his passage to the cinema around 1960 was virtually contained in his painting of the time: the versatile structures where the gesture is captured in several of its moments…by a constant search for the movement of the image which transforms itself into something other than itself. Lapoujade’s art posed problems that a certain cinema, a certain literature (his novels) and his puppets allowed him to explore: It is ultimately about the relationship of the real to the imaginary.’
1985 – Takes part in the Surréel exhibition, Cloister of the Collégiale, Saint-Emilion, Lapoujade presents 5 canvases, painted between 1982 and 1985.
1985 – Takes part in the exhibitions Autour de Sartre, in London and Rome and Autour de Ludovic Massé, Museum of Modern Art, Céret
1987 – Writers-artists of the 20th Century, Ingres Museum, Montauban
1986 – Participates in the exhibition, Original engravings – the 50s and 60s, Galerie Lacourière Frélaut, Paris
1988 – Robert Lapoujade-Paintings*, Odeon Gallery, Paris
‘… I hold painting to be a language, as a science and as a system of knowledge otherwise I would not paint… I take it for granted that real painting is specified by the singular “style” of each artist. An imaginary way of expressing reality, of fixing it in our memories ; manner “as the word names” and “does not resemble what it designates”, observed Merleau-Ponty. Style again, pictoriality, to the point of being based in matter of color; to qualify in a way of BEING, in substance and in depth of any re-presence…’
1992 – Participates in the Salon Comparaisons 92, Grand Palais, Paris and in the exhibition Small formats of painters of Second Reality, Galerie Ariane, Paris
1994 – The traces of the test, Algeria 1952-1962, graphic works
1996 – Robert Lapoujade (1921-1993), The Solitary Provocateur*, Ingres Museum, Montauban
Retrospective exhibition of 96 paintings and drawings, under the patronage of the region and the town hall of Montauban, the birthplace of Robert Lapoujade.
‘For more than sixty years, Robert Lapoujade literally fought against the contradictions that surrounded him, against the obsessions that never left him. To do this, he would have been ready to give up everything, and he did in fact give up a lot: fame, money, consistency, a straight route, moral, psychological, material security. Everything except painting. Maybe the only serious thing in his life’ Olivier Revault d’Allones, extract from the exhibition catalogue.
1998 – Robert Lapoujade (1921-1993), Parcours*,La Galerie, Paris
This exhibition, produced from private collections and the archives of Robert Lapoujade, restores the different dimensions of his work, first with paintings chosen from among the most representative of his different styles and themes (crowds, war and torture, portraits, eroticism), but also that of the filmmaker, fand finally that of the committed writer and artist that Robert Lapoujade has always been – and wanted to be.
