Gérard Garouste is one of the most famous contemporary painters in France, the Pompidou Center is devoting a retrospective to him.

A study of madness

The Center Pompidou is devoting a major retrospective to Gérard Garouste, one of the most important contemporary French painters, born in 1946, adept at uncompromising figuration. Placed under the sign of study but also of madness, the life and work of Gérard Garouste mutually nourish each other in a gripping dialogue. With his large figurative canvases, the artist revisits the history of art through the genres of painting, which he seeks to exhaust.

120 major paintings

The exhibition dedicated to him follows step by step the career and personal mythology of one of the most important French painters. Alongside 120 major paintings, often in very large format, the exhibition also gives space to installation, sculpture and graphic work. It allows us to grasp all the richness of the unclassifiable career of Gérard Garouste, « the intranquille », whose life under the sign of study but also of madness, and the enigmatic work, feed each other. in a gripping dialogue.

Emblematic works

Among the most emblematic works tinged with psychoanalysis and presented at the Center Pompidou : Le Banquet, an impressive triptych made up of large panels inspired by the Jewish holiday Purim, the Feast of Esther and the gift of manna (the food of the Hebrews in the desert, in the Old Testament). The writer Franz Kafka, who fascinated Garouste, is represented in the company of intellectuals and artists. Hands and bodies are disproportionately elongated, looks and faces as if distorted by a phenomenon of anamorphosis.

Gérard Garouste at the Center Pompidou