Jean Fautrier

Jean Fautrier was a French painter, considered one of the pioneers of Art Informel. Breaking away from academic traditions and geometric abstraction, he developed from the 1940s onward a highly personal language rooted in materiality, texture, and emotion, which profoundly influenced postwar abstraction in Europe. 

Created in 1960, Composition VII reflects this maturity. On a soft gray ground, Fautrier applied broad horizontal strokes of luminous blue, at once spontaneous and controlled. Without being figurative, these gestures evoke waves, clouds, or atmospheric currents.

The delicate layering and subtle absorption of pigment create a sense of suspension, as if color were floating in air. This work exemplifies Fautrier’s aim to make painting an equivalent of sensation rather than representation. Through movement, tonality, and rhythm, he opens a space where presence and absence coexist, giving his art a meditative and tactile intensity.