Do you know that strange feeling that sometimes arises when an artist's work seems naturally familiar, reassuring, vibrantly current? At the sight of these large areas of multicolored color, we could effortlessly believe that the author of these monumental and enveloping canvases is a contemporary painter in the prime of his life. Jean Messagier unfortunately does not belong to our time. A great figure in post-war gestural painting, the artist died in 1999 at the dawn of the 21st century, leaving behind a prolific and captivating body of work, punctuated by the poetry of the movement whose traces cannot be traced are too rarely put in the spotlight.

Just a few months after his return to favor in New York, the champion of lyrical abstraction is today crowned with a sublime tribute at the Larock-Granoff Gallery. Guided by the painter's perpetual quest to surpass himself, this chrono-thematic exhibition paints the portrait of an insatiable artist who is part of the continuity of a Pablo Picasso or a Jean Fautrier, while refusing the labels that we try in vain to attach to him. Between figuration, abstraction and informal art, Jean Messagier frees himself from all currents, ultimately finding his personal touch in his visionary “syntheses”, whose large sliding brush strokes loosen the color. A tribute full of nuances that runs from the inauguration of the Moulin Barbeau in the 60s to his last paintings full of vitality from the 90s.