Pierrette Bloch (June 16, 1928 – July 7, 2017) was a Paris-born Swiss painter and textile artist.

Early life

Pierrette Bloch was born on June 16, 1928, in Paris. In 1939, Bloch and her parents left France for Switzerland escaping Nazi persecution as jews. At the age of 15, she began living on her own in a hotel, which she says helped foster very early on a complete sense of independence and autonomy. After the liberation she returned to Paris and began her professional artistic training at the end of the 1940s, taking courses in sculptural arts.

Career

Starting 1947 she attended the classes of the cubist painter André Lhote, and in 1949 she was the first student of the American-born artist Henri Goetz. Bloch began exhibiting her works in Paris and the United States in the 1950s. At the age of 23 she had her first exposition in the Mai gallery. Later in her life she exhibited in many renowned museums in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, including the

MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

and the

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

. The ensemble of her works have their roots in the use of "poor" materials such as ink, paper, mesh, and horsehair. The last of these, horsehair, began appearing in her work in the 1970s, with her first sculpture using horsehair created in 1979, and have become one of the key symbols of her work. The corpus of her work thus spans mediums, including drawings, collages and three-dimensional pieces, and falls into the category of postwar abstraction. A monograph on Pierrette Bloch was published in November 2013 by Musée Jenisch.

Death

Bloch died on July 7, 2017, in Paris at the age of 89.

Biography

* 1947-48 - Studying with

Henri Goetz Henri Bernard Goetz (September 29, 1909 – August 12, 1989) was a French American surrealist painter and engraver. He is known for his artwork, as well as for inventing the carborundum printmaking process. His work is represented in more than 1 ...

and

André Lhote André Lhote (5 July 1885 – 24 January 1962) was a French Cubist painter of figure subjects, portraits, landscapes, and still life. He was also active and influential as a teacher and writer on art. Early life and education Lhote was bor ...

. * 1949 - Becomes friends with Colette and

Pierre Soulages Pierre Jean Louis Germain Soulages (; ; 24 December 1919 – 25 October 2022) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor. In 2014, President François Hollande of France described him as "the world's greatest living artist." His works are he ...

. * 1951 - Has first solo exhibitions in Paris at Galerie Mai, and also exhibits at Harvard in the United States. * 1953 - Starts creating collages. * 1973 - Chains first begin appearing in her body of work. * 1984 - Begins using horsehair in her works. The hair was at the time purchased without clear intentions, but became clear in her artistic path. * 1994 - First paper lines. * 2005 - The foundation Pro-MAHJ awards le prix Maratier 2005 to Pierrette Bloch for the ensemble of her works.

Key exhibitions

* 1999 - Retrospective at the

Musée de Grenoble The Museum of Grenoble () is a municipal museum of Fine Arts and antiquities in the city of Grenoble in the Isère region of France. Located on the left bank of the Isère (river), Isère River, place Lavalette, it is known both for its collecti ...

. * 2002 - Exhibition at the Cabinet d’art graphique of

. * 2003 - Exhibition at the Picasso Museum, Antibes. * 2009 - Exhibition at

Musée Fabre The Musée Fabre is a museum in the southern French city of Montpellier, capital of the Hérault ''département''. The museum was founded by François-Xavier Fabre, a Montpellier painter, in 1825. Beginning in 2003, the museum underwent a 61.2 m ...

, Montpellier. * 2010 - Participated in the exhibition On line du

MOMA The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York.

Public collections

* Museum of Modern Art, New York, US. * Musée Bellerive, Zurich, Suisse. * Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France. * Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France. * Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Paris, France. * Musée d'Eilat, Israël. * Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Pays-Bas.

Quotations

« J’entreprends un long voyage sur une feuille, je m’enveloppe dans ce parcours; ce n’est plus une surface, mais une aventure dans le temps. Le format n’existe plus. » ("I undertake a long voyage on a sheet of paper, I envelop myself in the journey; it's no longer a surface, but an adventure in time. The format of the work ceases to exist.")After a text by Marguerite Pilven in Paris-art.

References

* See M.J. Bonnet, "Les femmes artistes dans les avant-gardes", O. Jacob, 2006

External links

*
« Pierrette Bloch »
sur l' encyclopédie audiovisuelle de l'art contemporain *
Pierrette Bloch ou l'abstraction poetique"
o
Le Nouvel Obs
*
"Portraits de femmes artistes: Pierrette Bloch"
on ina.fr *

on Artistik Rezo *
"Pierrette Bloch"
on France Culture {{DEFAULTSORT:Bloch, Pierrette 1928 births 2017 deaths Artists from Paris 20th-century French Jews Jewish artists French emigrants to Switzerland Women textile artists