Jean Miotte

Banque De La Cite, Abstract Expressionist Lithograph by Jean Miotte

circa 1960

Jean Miotte was a French painter known for his lyrical abstract work which channeled introspective thought and athletic movements. Miotte was a part of the Art Informel movement and compared his working style to that of jazz musicians or ballet dancers in its use of free-flowing movements within a structured practice. Born on September 8th, 1926 in Paris, France, the artist studied under Achille-Émile Othon Friesz and Ossip Zadkine in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris. He later traveled to New York in 1961 where he met Modern painters Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work had a major influence on Miotte’s development, notably the incorporation of aggressive gestural forms. Miotte experiments in media ranging from oil to acrylic, gouache, ink, etching, lithography, and collage. His use of black paint on a white or raw surface frequently recalls calligraphy; when color appears, it ranges from primaries to earthy tones. Critics say he is unique among the Informels because he continues to grow, fighting repetition, questioning himself and his form of expression. In the 1990s, he began producing the canvases currently on display, the largest of his career. Today, much of his work is held at the Miotte Foundation, a part of the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, as well as in the collections of the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, the National Museum of Singapore, the Contemporary Art Museum in Dunkirk, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, among others. Miotte lived between Paris, New York and Fribourg, Switzerland over the last decades of his life. He died on March 1, 2016, in New York.