Al Loving - Abstract art collage

Alvin D. Loving (September 19, 1935 – June 21, 2005), better known as Al Loving was an African-American abstract expressionist painter. His work is known for hard-edge abstraction, fabric constructions, and large paper collages, all exploring complicated color relationships.Inspired by a visit to the Whitney Museum's exhibition "Abstract Design in American Quilts," in the early 1970s, Loving takes his canvases off the stretcher bars and begins experimenting. He started hanging strips of canvas from the walls and ceilings, playing with our perception of pictorial and sculptural ideals. Then, he reattached the fragments together with a sewing machine, creating large flowing fabric constructions. At first he painted the pieces of canvas, but later switched to dying the fabric. This way of working was not born out of a vacuum; Sam Gilliam, Alan Shields, and Richard Moch were also using the sewing machine. In fact, Loving considered himself within the context of abstract expressionism at this phase in his career; though he was not a painter but a material abstractionist.
Finally, by the 1980s, Loving had grown tired of fabric, too. So, he begins to integrated other materials into his constructions, such as corrugated cardboard and rag paper. Loving quickly took a liking to the casualness of tearing cardboard and gluing it onto other pieces; in fact, he considered this practice abstract expressionist as well. Unlike the fabric constructions, the large paper collages gave him a sense of freedom because he was trekking through uncharted territory (although this work has been likened to Frank Stella's curvilinear metal reliefs and Elizabeth Murray's shaped canvases). Loving integrated circles and spirals into these collages as a nod to his African roots and as an expression of growth and continued life. In the piece, Perpetual Motion (1994)(DASNY), Loving integrated materials such as cardboard and print. The cardboard is cut and overlapped to form a series of spirals. Each spiral has been carefully painted and placed to create dynamic color relationships. They do not have conventional matting under them, glass to cover them or frames to surround them: instead they cling flatly to the wall. Sandra Yolles, reviewing an exhibition in 1990, explained "Loving’s work is about earth, wind, fire, and water: some pieces might be considered atmospheric maps of life at full blast—stretching the possibilities of the human spirit by delineating its directions, currents, and eddies.Wikipedia

Jeannie Tarantola

Mixed-Media

Nouveau realist visual artist Francois Dufrene

Francois Dufrene (born Paris, September 21, 1930 - died Paris, December 12, 1982) was a French Nouveau realist visual artist, Lettrist and Ultra-Lettrist poet. He is primarily known as a pioneer in sound poetry and for his use of décollage within Nouveau réalisme.
Dufrene, along with Gil J Wolman and Brion Gysin, was one of the stalwarts of the experimental poetry in France. Dufrene's abstract poetry has led many to regard him as a member of the first generation sound poets - following in the footsteps of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Richard Huelsenbeck, Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Kurt Schwitters and Antonin Artaud (among others).
Francois Dufrene joined Isidore Isou and the Lettrist movement in 1946 and continued to participate until 1964. Dufrene's talent was evident in the fact that he was already a member of the Lettrist Group at only 16 years old.

 Dufrene then created a phonetic poetry which breaks the structures of language he called Ultra-Lettrist. The Ultra-Lettrist movement was an art form developed by Dufrene along with Jean-Louis Brau and Gil J Wolman in the 1950s, when they split from Isidore Isou's Lettrism. Dufrene explored vocal possibilities of concrete music, a form of expression based on spontaneity directly recorded to tape, exploiting the noise music of sound, meaning and nonsense.
Dufrene became friends with Yves Klein in 1950 and with Raymond Hains and Jacques Villeglé in 1954. In 1957 he discovered décollage and in 1960 - with Pierre Restany, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Arman, Hains and Villeglé - and helped found the art group known as Nouveau réalisme. He is considered one of the important artists in that Neo-Dada art movement.Wikipedia

Abstract collages Raymond Hains

Raymond Hains (9 November 1926 – 28 October 2005) was a French artist.
Raymond Hains was born in Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d'Armor) and studied at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Rennes before coming to Paris to present his first exhibition of “hypnagogic” photographs and starting a body of work with torn posters from the streets. In 1960, he signed, along with Arman, Dufrêne, Klein, Tinguely, Villeglé and Pierre Restany, the Manifesto of New Realism. However, he soon distanced himself from the movement to develop his own line of research through the tools of language, analogy, chance and coincidence, revealing the hidden connections between these disparate elements. From the 1950s onwards, Hains took part in several exhibitions and international events such as the “Documenta IV” in Kassel, the first Biennale of Paris, the first shows of The New Realism in Milan and Paris, the exhibitions “Paris-Paris” and “Paris-New York” at the Centre Georges-Pompidou as well as “Westkunst” and “Bilderstreit” in Cologne. His works have been presented in several museums in France and abroad. He was awarded the Kurt Schwitters Prize in 1997. Several famous art critics have written about him and many books have been written about his artwork.Wikipedia