Jean Benoît

Jean Benoît (born August 27, 1922 in Québec , † August 20, 2010 in Paris ) was a Canadian-French surrealist artist .

life and work

In 1937 he graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in Québec. In 1942 he took up further studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montréal . There he met the painter Alfred Pellan , one of the leading representatives of the French avant-garde in Canada. This gave him the Manifeste surréaliste to read and in 1948 persuaded him to sign the poetic manifesto Prisme d'yeux . In the same year Benoît married the artist Mimi Parent and moved with her to Paris.

There he gradually joined the surrealists around André Breton . In 1959, on the occasion of the international surrealist exhibition EROS in the Daniel Cordier gallery , he caused a scandal with a sadomasochistic staging. After he had got rid of his mask and his extravagant shaman costume in theatrical gestures, he burned the letters SADE on his body with a glowing iron. The painter Roberto Matta initially assisted him and then underwent the same procedure. The critic Alain Jouffroy wrote about the action in the magazine Arts that it set an example against the indolence, conformism and sleepiness of the present day. The action made Benoît, who had previously barely been able to live from his art, known in one fell swoop.

In 1961 he took part in a large exhibition of surrealists in New York organized by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp , and then in the Mostra internazionale del Surrealismo in the Arturo Schwarz gallery in Milan . In 1963 he joined the Groupe Panique founded by Fernando Arrabal , Roland Topor and Alejandro Jodorowsky . He designed the costumes for Arrabal's play Communion solennelle . In 1965 he took part in the écart absolu exhibition , the last major exhibition by the French surrealists. After that he withdrew more and more from the public.

It was not until 1996 that the 1900–2000 gallery showed a large exhibition of his works, consisting of sculptures, montages and jewelry. His objects were symbolic and mystical; very often he depicted skulls, faces and phalluses . Often he was inspired by the art of so-called primitive cultures, especially by the art of Oceania , which he had studied in detail since the 1960s. After this exhibition, several large solo exhibitions of his work followed.

literature

• Philippe Dagen: Jean Benoît , Le Monde , August 24, 2010, p. 21

Web links

• Objects and pictures by Jean Benoît