TITUS CARMEL

Gérard Titus-Carmel is born in Paris in 1942. He soon takes an interest in modern art and, from 1958 to 1962, trains at the Boulle School, technical school of furniture and decoration; he gets initiated to drawing and printmaking. Titus-Carmel long works with Antonio Segui and Vladimir Velickovic in a joint workshop in Arcueil. The artist, at that time, widely uses in his creation a humour of the object of “kitsch”, a source of inspiration that makes his works both so unusual and enigmatic.

Designer of a high precision, working in successive series, Titus-Carmel uses a special way to express the design. Since 1964, often representing France, Titus-Carmel participates in numerous international group exhibitions in France and abroad (Paris Biennale, Salons of Elder and Youth of Today, Salon of Mai, Interferences, Expo Osaka in 1982, etc.) He shows regularly, since 1967, his work in nearly 200 solo exhibitions (in France, in Paris especially, but also in Tokyo, New York, etc.). Titus-Carmel participates in the largest international exhibitions of engraving (Ljubljana, Krakow, Tokyo, Vienna, Grenchen, Biella, Bradford, Baden-Baden, Prague) and numerous prizes are granted to him.

The artist in the early 70s, examines the evolution of the deterioration of the object; the active or mental participation of the viewer, element which always characterizes the production of the artist, is already at that time largely sought. Titus Carmel continues to play a more active role in the mainstream of conceptual art and, more specifically, within the movement “Land Art”, since working on the definition of “places”. He explores the space between the object and his imitation. In a style of abstract tendency, Titus-Carmel returns to painting in the mid 80s.

From his first exhibitions, in the sixties, his work painted or drawn, like his graphic work (lithographs, etchings, screen prints), reveals a strong taste for literature. He illustrates poets like Jacques Dupin and Philippe Jaccottet, before giving his own collections of poems; he has published so far about forty books, essays and collections of poetry. In 1992, Titus-Carmel publishes reflections on painting (“She still moves…” Ed Actes Sud).

His work is represented in hundreds of museums and public collections. The artist has also produced a monumental work (Ministry of Finance in Paris, DRAC Champagne-Ardenne, the Palais des Congrès in Nantes, etc.).

Gérard Titus-Carmel is all together painter, printmaker, draughtsman, creator of environments.

Important Exhibitions

la Biennale de Paris (1969)

Expo ’70 (Osaka, 1970)

la Biennale d’Alexandrie (1972)

« Amsterdam-Paris-Düsseldorf » (Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1972)

Dokumenta VI (Cassel, 1977)

European Dialogue (Biennale de Sidney, 1979)

Biennale Internationale d’Arte (Venise, 1972 et 1984)

« Art en France : un siècle d’inventions » (Moscou, Leningrad, 1989)

« Art contemporain en France » (Exposition universelle de Séville, 1992)

Suite Grünewald (Collège des Bernardins, Paris, 2009)