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RO GE R D E MO NTEBELLO
BERNARD CHAUCHET
CONTEMPORARY
ART
ROGER DE MONTEBELLO
TRANSITIONS
Private View
Thursday 6th November 2014
at
55 Hollywood Road, London SW10 9HX
Drinks: 6.30 - 9.00pm
Exhibition
From 7th until 22nd November 2014
The entire exhibition can be viewed on: www.chauchet.com
Paintings are for sale from receipt of this catalogue
55 HOLLYWOOD ROAD, LONDON SW10 9HX
Front cover - Venice, Dogana oil on canvas 150x150cm
Above - Venice, Doorway I oil on canvas 57x60cm
Tel: 020 7352 2772 | 07711 43 68 68
bernard@chauchet.com www.chauchet.com
OPENING HOURS
Mon - Fri 10.30am - 6.30pm
Sat 11.00am - 5.00pm
TRANSITION AND REALITY
The three main themes explored in this exhibition are: mist, doorways, and
cypress trees. They are quite different subjects, but strangely share one common
notion, that of transition or passage.
The mist depicted here is more than just a meteorological phenomenon - it is
about veiling and unveiling; about the movement from the visible to the invisible. The fog moves over an underlying reality, revealing to us the parts it wants
to show - smoothly covering the rest.
The theme of the doorway is about transition: from the exterior to the interior,
from clarity to darkness - from the known world to the unknown. When a manmade doorway is reflected into the water, there is an additional crossing, coming
from the fusion of the doorway with the water. Culture enters the world of nature, and they both become integrated. The stairs in front of the door then act
as a passageway for the eye.
As for the cypress trees, their verticality combined with their pointed crowns,
underline the transition they embody from the ground to the sky, from the earthly to the celestial, from matter to light.
And beyond the themes themselves, there is another way in which these paintings are about transition, namely in the way in which they are painted. In order
to achieve the contradictory goal of uniting geometrical forms with the vibration of light, of reconciling order with life, I had to render the shimmering
of light by using tonal juxtapositions, which split or broke up forms without
suppressing them. Thus, the eye flows more easily from one object to the next;
and reality, supposedly made from different and distinct objects, appears more
integrated and transparent, and suggests the existence of an underlying unity.
This pictorial evolution can be seen here, where recent paintings tend to dematerialize reality
Roger de Montebello
September 2014
Photography by Francesco Barasciutti (Venice)
San Michele, Venice oil on canvas 50x73cm
3
Venice, Dogana X oil on canvas 73x92cm
Venice, Dogana II oil on canvas 57x60cm
4
5
Venice, Dogana IV oil on canvas 45x61cm
Venice, Dogana IX oil on canvas 57x60cm
6
7
Venice, Dogana I oil on canvas 45x61cm
Dogana VII oil on canvas 57x60cm
8
9
Venice, Dogana VIII oil on canvas 57x60cm
Venice, Dogana VI oil on canvas 57x60cm
10
11
Venice, Dogana V oil on canvas 114x146cm
Venice, Dogana III oil on canvas 45x61cm
12
13
Venice, San Giorgio oil on canvas 45x61cm
Venice, San Marco oil on canvas 89x116cm
14
15
Venice, Doorway - Teresa II oil on canvas 33x46cm
16
Venice, Doorway - Teresa V oil on canvas 81x100cm
17
Venice, Doorway - Teresa III oil on canvas 140x160cm
18
Venice, Doorway - Teresa IV oil on canvas 140x160cm
19
Venice II oil on panel 16x22cm
Venice III oil on panel 16x22cm
Venice IX oil on panel 16x22cm
Venice VIII oil on panel 16x22cm
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21
Venice I oil on panel 16x22cm
Venice V oil on panel 16x22cm
Venice X oil on panel 16x22cm
Venice VI oil on panel 16x22cm
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BIOGRAPHY
Roger de Montebello (born Paris 1964)
lives and works in Venice, Italy. The
city of Venice itself, and its mirror-like
lagoon, are a point of departure for his
pictorial work, which then develops into
a broader exploration of light, structure, transparency, context and visual
archetypes.
Over the years Montebello has attracted
amongst prestigious figures from the art
world – such as René Huyghe, the art
historian, former curator of paintings at
the Louvre, and member of Académie Française. Other champions include the writer
and TV presenter Francesco da Mosto (Francesco’s Venice, Francesco’s Italy, etc.), as
well as the actor Michael Palin, who has bought a number of Montebello’s paintings.
The late Élie de Rothschild was also an admirer.
His recent shows include a participation at the 2011 Venice Biennale («MontebelloMegachromia ») and Paris Nuit Blanche 2011, as well as a sequence of four shows
at Arthème Galerie in Paris, from 2009 to 2014 and a show at Adler Art Gallery in
Gstaad (2012). His work has already been presented on several occasions in London at
Bernard Chauchet Contemporary Art.
SEL ECT ED RECENT SOLO EX H IBITIONS
Above: Venice, San Michele oil on canvas 50x112cm
Back cover: Venice, Doorway II oil on canvas 50x112cm
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2009-14Artheme, Paris – four exhibitions
2012Adler Art Gallery, Gstaad
2011 Venice Biennale, Venice – “Montebello-Megachromia”
Paris Nuit Blanche
2010 Bernard Chauchet Contemporary Art, London
2005 Galeria Estandarte, Madrid
2004 Gallery Holly Snapp, Venice
Galerie Pelar, Newport, New York
2003 Bernard Chauchet Contemporary Art, London
2002 Artemis Fine Arts, Paris
BERNARD CHAUCHET
CONTEMPORARY ART
55 HOLLY WOOD ROAD, LONDON SW10 9HX
bernard@chauchet.com www.chauchet.com
Tel: +44 (0)20 7352 2772 Mobile: +44 (0)7711 43 68 68