75 x 108 cm
With this our last online exhibition of the summer from London, the works of Jacques Nestlé bring a breath of fresh air – stylish artworks that are full of the Parisian chic spirit of the 1950s and 1960s. Nestlé is an interesting artist, at home among the avant-garde painters of his time, but he has only recently been the subject of retrospective exhibitions and remains relatively affordable. The works in the exhibition are all priced at between $3,500 and $10,000.
In the 1920s, as a teenager in Paris, he met Matisse who remained an influence throughout his life. In the 1930s he lived and worked in Berlin, exhibiting at the Berlin Secession and associating with the artist of Berlin’s Bauhaus. He returned to Paris towards the end of the 1930s, and soon after the war the eminent dealer and collector, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler suggested to Nestlé that he would like to promote his work, but Nestlé did not respond positively to this invitation. He subsequently described himself as “Neither a painter nor an artist, I am simply a man who paints”, and after the war Nestlé lived happily and without ostentation on the proceeds of his art. In the early 1950s he briefly experimented with geometric abstraction but, partly influenced by American abstract expressionism and specifically Robert Motherwell, Nestlé turned to a more spontaneous creative process. From thence onwards Nestlé’s art deliberately positions itself part way between figurative and abstract art, developing a personalised expression of inner emotions with elegance and restraint.