Exposition « Franta, la condition humaine »

Beyond the figure of man, omnipresent in Franta's work, it is the concept of humanity that is its cardinal vector. With a life marked by exile, resistance and resilience, the life and work of Franta, a Czech artist who settled in Vence in 1958, exemplify a commitment that places humanity at the forefront. Figurative and expressive, his art recounts one man's struggle against all forms of power and oppression in the contemporary world. He proclaims loud and clear that the human condition depends both on the defence of individual freedom and collective consciousness.

His paintings, drawings and sculptures form a body of work of intense expressive power, which gained international recognition in the 1960s in the context of an era in search of a new humanism. Saving humanity from the excesses of a society dominated by autocracy, technology and individualism: this is the meaning of the struggle that Franta fought and continued to pursue throughout his life. His works thus present figures and landscapes marked by all the upheavals they have undergone, their materiality bearing the traces of these events.

It is an aesthetic that calls for a palette of dark tones, angry, generic and undefined forms, bodies that are simply silhouetted or even fragmented. If there is something at work here that stems from a kind of explosion, Franta's art is animated by a dynamic vitality that is corroborated by his figures, whether standing or in motion. Like a metaphor for possible hope.

The artist's exhibition at the Musée de Vence will thus seek to highlight all these qualities of tension that govern his work by making various connections between painted, drawn and sculpted images.