"Ben", BEN VAUTIER (Naples, 1935). "Life is competition",... Lot 12

"Ben", BEN VAUTIER (Naples, 1935). "Life is competition", 1992, from the Olympic Centennial Suite. Silkscreen on 270 gsm Vélin d'Arches paper, copy 114/250. Signed and justified by hand. Size: 63 x 90 cm. Benjamin Vautier has been, as well as a visual artist, a public agitator and art critic, interested in social vindication and multiculturalism. For him, all art must mean a shock, produce an intense emotion or reaction, and be novel. Although he was born in Naples, he spent his childhood in Naples, Turkey, Egypt, Greece and Italy. In 1949 he moved to Nice, where he spent much of his career. His contact in Nice with artists such as Fontan, Malaval, Klein and Arman was fundamental in shaping his style. In the 1960s he travelled to New York where he took part in the actions of the Fluxus group. His work was also imbued with conceptualism and minimalism, essential in his conception of art, which for him is not a purpose but a vehicle, a form of communication.The Olympic Suite is made up of 50 lithographs and serigraphs chosen to represent various contemporary artistic trends. It was published to commemorate the first centenary of modern Olympism. The artists chosen are defined by diverse movements and pictorial trends, from the conceptualism and minimalism of "Ben" Vautier, the lyrical abstraction of Yasse Tabuchi, the painting of Oleg Tselkov who concentrates on the human figure, intensely expressive and treated with forceful forms and intense colors that seek to reflect the conflicts and violence of his time, and finally the work of André Arabis, clearly abstract and geometric.