Claude TROXLER

Born in 1945

Art(s) : Painting.
Mouvement(s) : Symbolism.

Contact

13 Cour de la Fertière
61130 LA CHAPELLE SOUEF

puce Web site

Criticism

Born in Rouen in 1945, Claude Troxler is a passionate and dynamic self-taught artist, and has described himself as “a painter of Atypism”. Winner of numerous awards, he has exhibited his work regularly since 1985, mainly in Normandy and particularly at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants Normands. The solid reputation that he has built up is due to surprising artworks that are in line with the neo-expressionist movement of the 1980s, which was a reaction against the Minimalism, Conceptual Art and other avant-garde movements that pronounced painting “dead and buried”, a planned work of art and its mental representation being worth more than its formal appearance and production. In 1985, tireless researcher Claude Troxler began exploring new paths by relentlessly striving to innovate on all fronts, in terms of technique and size alike, presenting universal themes in the slightly provocative spirit of Dada, and playing on humour and derision. His brimming and daring creativity is strangely reminiscent of the career of Max Ernst, that great pioneer of contemporary art who was continually inventing new techniques. His reflection on pictorial space and limits is rather unusual, and the series of paintings that he describes as “Hors-Cadre”, which he began in 1994, remind us of the desires entertained by the French artistic movement Supports/Surfaces to break free of the canvas in their quest for blurring boundaries. In 2002, Claude Troxler gradually began developing a new art of painting, one that combined assembling materials such as wood, cork, glass and fabric, or disparate and unusual objects, in the spirit of the Merz Pictures by Kurt Schwitters. He also readily chops shapes up. Playing on the third dimension, some of his creations could be described as “sculpture-paintings”, and display particularly interesting relief effects. The expressivity of his work is constantly strengthened by the use of thick pastes and bright colours, consistent with Claude Troxler’s admiration for Van Gogh. His painting becomes more and more intense as a result of his opting for very suggestive figurative subjects. The fascination of their author for cosmic themes, unchained elements, and nature transposed into landscapes of a revisited realism, not forgetting the human figure as conveyed in the series commenced in 2011 called “Déjantées”, has provided him with all the inspiration necessary to create a fantastical universe, one that features a new symbol-filled vision of the world. Without taking himself seriously, the artist appears to transpose his states of mind into this vision with flair and poetical humour. While Claude Troxler’s work stems from a number of strong 20th century currents, he does not actually fit any category. His highly colourful expressionistic symbolism carries a certain magic that does not leave the observer indifferent. At the root of this rich, flourishing and unbridled production is the painter’s concern for the artform, which obliges the observer to view his painting differently. “I leave it up to people to interpret what I intended to express. We don’t all see things the same way,” he declares. If his aim is to impress, then he succeeds perfectly!

Francine BUNEL-MALRAS, Historian of Art