Gottfried Honegger

It was shortly before the opening of his exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. To prolong the pleasure of seeing or revisiting a number of his works, we took the initiative to dedicate our first exhibition of the autumn season to him, featuring paintings, collages, drawings, sculptures, and reliefs, representing pieces created between 1975 and 2015, including two remarkable works. During his previous exhibition at the gallery, his "Farewell to the Painting" evoked a series of very ethereal reliefs; we will be presenting a black and white polyptych from this period (2012) in iron and painted aluminum (100 x 200 cm). Another, earlier piece (1980-81), a triptych in collage and acrylic on canvas of considerable size (230 x 313 cm), will be shown on the gallery's ground floor. This piece, he confided to us upon viewing it, is unique in that he had painted on the canvas, as if it were a frame. In total, hung on the walls and placed on the floor between the ground floor and the first floor, there will be about twenty works. We didn't think he would come; it takes time to grow young, and he is living proof of that. He honors us with his presence and delight by traveling again from Zurich, where he now lives. Gottfried Honegger is never where you expect him to be. Take a stroll along the port of La Rochelle, to the very top of the Lantern Tower, in the gallery (top floor, 38 meters high), and you will discover an astonishing installation: a granite composition on the floor, and fixed beneath the tower's cone, a long aluminum arrow pointing towards the ground. Both works date from 1985. This 12th-century tower served as a landmark and a beacon, just as Gottfried did for an entire generation of artists working in the same vein.
Gottfried in German means: the peace of God, he was born in 1917 in Engadine, Switzerland.