André Marfaing

André Marfaing is a French painter and engraver who was born in Toulouse in 1925 and who died in 1987. He went to Paris in 1949 and devoted his life to painting. Very quickly he passed to abstract work and, after coming into contact with Pierre Soulage, he moved into using black almost exclusively in his work.

His artistic works are ascetic and sometimes approach ideograms. They explore contrasts, light and shade, emptiness and fullness, being and nothingness. "Alongside Soulage, Hartung and Kline, Marfaing is one of the greatest artists to work in black after the Second World War, but he also gently approaches this shade with prudence, tenderness and firmness," writes the journalist Frédéric Edelmann. Towards the end of his career, the relationship between white and black became inverted and the artist gave more and more space to light.

André Marfaing received numerous awards for his work and represented France at the Venice Biennale alongside Poliakoff, Messagier, Guitet and Manessier. He is exhibited in galleries all over France, but also in London and Luxembourg. His works have also been the subject of exhibitions in public institutions, at the Abattoirs of Toulouse (2011), the BNF (2002), and the Troyes Museum of Modern Art (2001).