MARCELLE CAHN

Born in 1895 in Strasbourg and died in Neuilly sur Seine in 1981.

Her training followed the evolution of painting at the time: she studied in Berlin with the Expressionist master Lovis Corinth, then in Paris with the Nabis, and joined the classes at the Académie Moderne in the studio of Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant. It was at this point that she took the leap into abstraction, developing a personal style that combined geometric rigor and sensitivity. In 1929, she became a member of the Cercle et Carré group, which championed abstraction and geometry in opposition to the irrationalities of Surrealism. She became friends with Jean Arp, met Mondrian there, and participated in this vibrant Parisian artistic scene. After the war, she regularly exhibited her abstract compositions at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. It was during this period that she defined the style that characterizes her: paintings with a white background traversed by a play of lines or raised shapes; it was also at this time that she created her amazing collages from everyday materials: envelopes, labels, photographs, postcards, stickers,...

In the early 1960s, she created her first "spatial" sculptures, made of planes articulated in space. Until her final years, she worked tirelessly on her art, always experimenting in the solitude of her studio-bedroom. Marcelle Cahn expressed a profound desire to detach herself from the world and devoted her life to her work, even renouncing her private and intimate life. She also rejected her bourgeois origins, living modestly and solitarily, on the margins of society. Her loyal friends, such as Gottfried Honegger, Imre Pan, and Serge Lemoine, supported her and initiated numerous projects to promote and disseminate her work.