BAZAINE, Jean (1904-2001) - Rythme d'eau, 1959
Mosaic with enamels and natural stones, made with the mosaist Maximilien Herzélé. The pieces are cut and set unequally in order to play with the light. - 255 x 953 cm
Date of entry at UNESCO - December 1959
Acquisition made by UNESCO upon the completion of the Fontenoy building in Paris
Country of origin - France
In 1957, the UNESCO "Committee for Architecture and works of art" commissioned Jean Bazaine for a mosaic that would decorate, alongside ten other works by international artists (such as Picasso, Calder, Afro, etc.), the Organization’s permanent headquarters in Paris. The committee members included the architects who built the buildings, Bernard Zehrfuss, Marcel Breuer, Luigi Nervi, as well as C. Para-Perez who chaired a committee of artistic advisers responsible for guiding the choice of works, which also included Georges Salles, Shahid Subrawardy and Herbert Read.
The monumental mosaic "Water Rhythms" was created in resonance with the Japanese garden. It is made up of “tesserae” (small pieces) of different materials such as enamel and stone. Bazaine was particularly sensitive to the expressiveness of materials, and creates here variations of blues, white/gray, red and yellow/orange. When looking at the mosaic up close, one finds that each shape has been made using a range of colors: for example, in the red shapes there are also burgundy and purple tiles. This combination of different materials and colors gives the mosaic a vibrancy that may be likened to water. In Bazaine's own words, the density and scale of these rhythms are meant to transcribe "the great vital signs that are the truth of Man and the Universe." In his writings and reflections, Bazaine meditated on the painter's approach, which is supposed to associate the creative act with the quest for the sacred; his work, full of emotional expression, tends towards the religious. For him, the essential resided in the "daily illumination, this eye open to the world, that is, increasingly, as we advance, but a glimpse inward, a self-examination.” Following in the wake of his teacher, Henri Matisse, who revealed to him a world that was both coherent and thrilling, Bazaine strove, in his own way, to search for "another fullness, another purity». “Water Rhythms” illustrates Bazaine’s sense of the monumental and movement, as well as his conception of touch, color and surface structure. Water is a recurrent theme in his work, and from 1936 until his death, he tirelessly sought to capture the movement, rhythm, light and depth of this element which fascinated him, through paintings as diverse as “Bath” (1939), “Divers” (1946), “Zeeland” (1957) and “Saint Guénolé” (1960). Metaphor of passing time but also unchanging time, water allowed Bazaine to play with different feelings (anger, joy), material and techniques (painting, drawing, collage, mosaic, etc.).
© Adagp, Paris 2012 - Photo: UNESCO - Download