Pierrette Bloch (1928-2017, Paris, France)

Though born in Paris, France, Pierrette Bloch spent the majority of her childhood in Switzerland, after her family fled France to escape the war in 1939.  Just four years later, she started living on her own in a hotel, and later in the 1940’s she returned to Paris to study fine art. Whilst in Paris, she studied under renowned artists Henri Bernard Goetz and André Lhote. Her work has been collected by the New York Museum of Modern Art and Centre Pompidou, and is represented by Karsten Greve Gallery.

The artist’s complex compositions touch on themes of positive and negative space, mark making and the absence thereof.  Her works recount her tedious and repetitive action of mark making, through the dozens or, at times, even hundreds of dots that appear in each of her paintings.  Though the basic action of painting a dot remains the same throughout the painting process, her works show the natural variation of humanity: some dots are darker or lighter, some oblong and some round, some larger or smaller.  She sees these works a record of time, of her actions, and of the creative process as a whole.

Though the majority of her works feature black ink as the mark-maker, she does, at times, also work with white ink or oil pastel on black paper, reversing the active and passive roles of black and white.  Does the black paper become negative space, or is positiveness inherent in its color?

Adding to the mystique of Bloch’s process is her use of horsehair.  Knotted and coiled locks of dark hair parallel the marks made by her ink pens, again impressing a positive space upon a white paper, which in actuality remains unaffected under the sewn-in hairs.

SF