Pierre Alechinsky
The last of the CoBrA painters, and the one who put a border of small drawings around the picture.
Pierre Alechinsky was born in Brussels in 1927 and joined CoBrA in 1949, at twenty-two, the youngest of the group and in the end the longest-lived. He trained in typography and illustration, moved to Paris in 1951, and studied brushwork in Japan, which changed how he painted more than anything CoBrA had taught him. In 1965 he abandoned oil for acrylic and, with it, the easel: the paper goes on the floor, the ink is worked fast, and the sheet is afterwards mounted on canvas. That format is the signature. So are the remarques marginales, the strip of small framed drawings he runs around the central image like a predella, commenting on it.
Most of what comes to market is on paper. The large ink and acrylic works mounted on canvas sit at the top; below them are drawings, gouaches and a very large printed output of etchings and lithographs, much of it made with Paris publishers over five decades. Because the works are on paper, condition does a great deal of the work in a valuation — light exposure, cockling, and whether an old mount has been trimmed to it. Signature, date and edition size are all normally present and should be legible.
If you own a work by Pierre Alechinsky
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.