Arman

Armand Pierre Fernandez, known as Arman, was born in 1928 in the south of France and died in 2008 in New York. He became familiar with his father’s antique shop at an early age and began painting various objects at the age of 10.

Arman first trained at the Arts Décoratifs in Nice, then at the École du Louvre in Paris, where he formed a deep friendship with Yves Klein. Together with others, they co-founded the New Realists movement, which opposed abstract art. He spent a lot of time in New York, where he learned to use Plexiglas and polyester. He presented his series of “accumulations” of objects and followed up with his “combustions.” Arman’s success grew in the 1980s and 1990s, and he expanded the techniques he used to produce his works. He began to create monumental works such as the sculptures that adorn the Lincoln Center in New York and the Elysée Palace.

The New Realists

Rather than reproducing forms inherited from the past, they were interested in the “new reality” they saw around them: manufactured objects, television, and advertising images, which they each adapted in their own way:
Arman accumulated objects of all kinds, César compressed cars, Yves Klein repainted the world in blue, Jean Tinguely invented crazy machines, Raymond Nains and Jacques Villeglé removed torn posters, etc. They prove that contemporary creation flourishes singularly when it knows how to embrace the major issues of our society: the future of cities, the excesses of communication, and the meaning of new technologies.

Arman’s Colères

In 1961, Arman began his Colères series: the destruction of objects glued back together on pedestals or wall mounts. In his Combustions series, these same objects are burned. Breaking, cutting, burning: three actions he experiments with to dematerialize the real form, the outline, the limitations of external and internal space. By breaking, cutting, and burning, Arman gives the object the freedom it is deprived of. He disrupts its predefined form to offer it a new possibility.