Paul Coulon is delighted to announce the gallery’s first participation in Frieze Masters, presenting a selection of early paintings and works on paper by Haitian born artist Hervé Télémaque. This presentation, in the Spotlight section, is the artist’s first solo project in London since his exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in 1964. A catalogue will accompany the presentation of works featuring an interview with the artist and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Born in 1937 in Port au Prince, Hervé Télémaque moved to New York in 1957 to study at the Art Students League under the tutorship of Julian Levi. Here he was exposed to abstract expressionism, and most importantly influenced by Arshile Gorky’s work. Disappointed by American racism, Télémaque moved to Paris in 1961. His interest in comic books drew him to the Pop Art movement, the influence of which is seen clearly in his work from this time. In 1964 he organised the exhibition
Mythologies Quotidienneswith fellow artists and art critic Gérald Gassiot-Talabot at the Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, which marked the beginning of what Gassiot-Talabot dubbed the Figuration Narrative Movement. The Frieze Masters presentation will show two iconic works from this period
Banania III (1965) which marks the beginning of his interest in pop art and
L’enfant Voit Rouge (1966) an example of Télémaque’s series of combine paintings.
We are excited to also bring together a previously unseen group of works on paper which Télémaque realised returning from a trip in Haiti in 1973.
In 2018 the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired the painting The Ugly American 1962/1964 with the help of their trustees Marie- Josée Kravis and Henry R. Jarvis in honour of Jerry Speyer.
Hervé Télémaque enjoyed a retrospective at the IVAM, Centre Julio González in Valencia in 1998 and a travelling retrospective at the Centre Pompidou Paris in 2015, Musée Catini in 2015 and at the Fondation Clément in 2016.
His work is featured in the collections of:
The Museum of Modern Art New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Museum of Modern Art in Nice, Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow, Moderna Museet in Stockholm and IVAM, Centre Julio González in
Valencia.
