Michel Parmentier

Background

Michel Parmentier was born in 1938 in Paris, France.

Education

Michel Parmentier studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, from 1961 to 1965.

Career

Parmentier lived and worked in Paris. Since December 1965 Parmentier’s work has consisted of enormous canvases covered with monochrome horizontal stripes, 38cm high, which alternate with white strips. These works are made using pliage - a technique invented in 1960 by Simon Hantaï - which became Parmentier’s only working method from this moment. He dedicated himself to these paintings for three years, modifying the color of the stripes each year: blue in 1966, grey in 1967, red in 1968. All Parmentier’s works are influenced by radicalism and a refusal to compromise on form or ideology.

After a break of a few years, in 1983 the artist took up his work where he left off. By 1986 Parmentier had turned his focus to large-scale, freehand work on paper. Utilizing graphite, charcoal, pastel and oil stick, this body of work broadened his practice while remaining committed to the same motivations that had fueled his career in the 1960s.

Parmentier died on June 24, 2000 in Paris, France.

Achievements

• Michel Parmentier is best known for the highly standardized, horizontally-striped canvases that he painted between 1965 and 1968. His work is included in the collections of MOMA (New York), Carré d'art (Nîmes), Centre national des arts plastiques (Paris), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Fonds régional d'art contemporain Bourgogne (Dijon), Fonds régional d'art contemporain Bretagne (Rennes), LaM (Lille), Musée d'art moderne, Musée des beaux-arts de Nantes.
  
  The Galerie Jean Fournier (2011) and the Galerie Loevenbruck in Paris (2014) in Paris recently held exhibitions dedicated to Michel Parmentier. Some of his canvases are shown at Punta della Dogana in the exhibition “Accrochage”(2016).

Works

More photos

• painting

  • 8 novembre

  • 17 juil

  • 18 février

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Peinture n°12

  • 15 octobre

  • Peinture n°10

  • 28 septembre 1984

  • Untitled

Membership

Parmentier met Daniel Buren with whom he founded BMPT, a group of four artists, in 1966. With Olivier Mosset and Niele Toroni, the group put on provocative happenings and created minimalist works that had the drastic intention of proclaiming the refusal of painting. Parmentier broke from this collective in December 1967.

• BMPT , France

  1966 - 1967

Connections

colleague:

Daniel Buren

colleague:

Olivier Mosset

colleague:

Niele Toroni

References

• Michel Parmentier: December 1965–November 20, 1999: A Retrospective