Gérard Fromanger
1939–2021 · French visual artist and painter associated with Nouvelle Figuration
Gérard Fromanger (Paris, 1939 – 2021) was a French painter and visual artist associated with Nouvelle Figuration, also known as figuration narrative, a movement active in France in the 1960s and 1970s. He matters because he combined figurative painting with a critical view of urban life and consumer society.
He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where his first solo exhibition took place in 1966. Alongside painting, he worked with collage, sculpture, photography, film and lithography. In 1968 his large translucent half-balloon street sculptures, called Souffles, drew attention, and he collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard on the short film Film-tract 1968.
His paintings address urban themes and consumer society. The movement he belonged to reacted against abstract art and took a more political stance than American pop art. Fromanger has been described as a social critic who holds a political position without losing sight of the poetic dimension. Michel Foucault, a friend of his, wrote about his work.
A retrospective, Gérard Fromanger: rétrospective 1962–2005, was shown in galleries in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland in 2005. He lived and worked in both Siena and Paris.