Background
François Arnal was born on October 2, 1924 in the commune La Valette-du-var, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, France. He came from the family of winemakers.
François Arnal was born on October 2, 1924 in the commune La Valette-du-var, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, France. He came from the family of winemakers.
François Arnal received his secondary education in a Toulon High school. Then, Arnal entered the Aix-en-Provence University where he studied law and letters and gained the degree in these disciplines.
As to the first drawing lessons, François was taught by a Dutch artist Conrad Kickert who encouraged Arnal to paint.
François Arnal started his professional activity as a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War. In 1943, Arnal joined the guerilla movement of Auvergne where he met Conrad Kickert who became his first painting instructor and close friend.
Arnal began his artistic career after the War in 1948 when he came to Paris. In the capital, the painter got acquainted with many of art colleagues, among which were the painters Pierre Dmitrienko, Serge Rezvani, as well as the writers Raymond Queneau, Hubert Juin, J.-C Lambert and Alain Jouffroy.
At the beginning of 1950s, Arnal travelled to Mexico, the United States and Tahiti. On the island, the artist created bright-coloured symbolic paintings.
François Arnal revealed his interest in sculpture when he returned to Paris in 1960. At the same period, the artist joined two Post-war Modernist movements – the Lyrical Abstraction and the Art Informel. The painter took part at the exhibitions at the Galerie Maeght which gathered the abstract painters of the time. One of the most remarkable Arnal’s creations of this time became his spray painting series depicting the traces of objects, called the Bombardements. Despite his artistic activity in France, Arnal had also lived and worked in the United States for six months where he successfully exhibited his works.
In the middle 1960s, the artist finally settled down in the Arcueil commune of Paris where in 1968, he opened a Studio A which produced designer illumination tools and tables. Arnal had worked in the Studio till 1975 when he returned to painting and started to write novels and plays.
At the begging of 21th century, the painter started to collaborate with the artist Jean-Marc Guiot. So, in 2002, Arnal presided the Guiot’s association CORBUCASSO. Four years later, François Arnal created about twenty sculptures for the "Atelier Héphaïstos" of Guiot. The collaboration of two artists remained the couple of following years during which appeared many art objects in wood and iron, including the prototype of the Veli Bike table made from a wheel of bicycle and edited to 50 copies later, in 2010, under the mark of Arnal’s Studio A.
François Arnal was a prolific and talented artist whose painting, sculpture and design creations were recognized all over the world. So, the artists’ artworks were exhibited in many prestigious galleries and museums, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago and the museums of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Some of Arnals’ works became subjects of such group exhibitions organized after his death as Paris Match: Henri Samuel and the Artists He Commissioned at the Demisch Danant gallery in New York City (2014) and The CoBrA Exhibition at the Sky Gallery in Boca Raton, United States (2018).
The Passage of the Red Sea
The Essential Fields XII
Live with My Friends
Untitled
Bald Mountain
Two Black Spots on Green Stripes
War Machine
Mistral Everywhere
Mussels' Cage (Analogy IX)
Abstract Сomposition on a White Background
He Never Lies
Big Flies (Meeps series)
The Good, the Beast and Bad
Always More Distant light
My Mistral
The Meeps in the Fields
Get Wet for Me
Trouble Makers
Red Target
Why Not on the Fridge’s Surface
Louisiana
The Boxers
Casbahs' Details
Where the Bottom Hurts
They
Untitled
Macabane Under the Leaves
The Coral Reef
Bombardment 22 of a Small Solar and Vegetable World
Low Table
Disgust
Bombardment 129 - Pants and Shirts
Untitled
Composition
Series of I ... ..Ouf
Quotations: "We do not know anything, where we came from, where we go to, except that we have to love life, ... and I love life."
He was a Dutch artist.
He was a French painter and sculptor.
He was a painter, engraver and author.
He was a French novelist, poet, critic and editor.
He was a Belgian poet, novelist, essayist and literary critic who created his writings in French.
He was a French writer, poet and artist.
