Georges Mathieu
Painted enormous canvases in public, at speed, in costume, and designed the ten-franc coin.
Georges Mathieu was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1921, studied law and English literature, and came to painting late and theatrically. He coined the term Lyrical Abstraction for the French answer to action painting, and made the act of painting a public performance: enormous canvases attacked with paint squeezed straight from the tube, completed in front of audiences in under an hour, sometimes in period costume, with titles drawn from French royal history. He also designed the ten-franc coin, stamps, tapestries and Air France posters, and argued for the artist's role in public life. He died in 2012.
The 1950s and early 1960s canvases lead this market decisively; the much larger later output, produced at speed over five decades, is a broad and considerably more modest field, and separating the two is the substance of a valuation. Mathieu's paint is applied very thickly and directly from the tube, and it has often cracked, slumped or lifted, so structural condition needs proper assessment. There is a large output of works on paper and of lithographs. The market is principally French, with growing interest from Asia.
If you own a work by Georges Mathieu
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.