Jean-Claude FARHI

Admired by both upcoming artists and collectors, Jean-Claude Farhi is recognized as one of the most important sculptors of his generation. Since the 1960s, he has created his work from recycled materials (including plexiglas, lacquered metals and unrefined steel), always remaining to his grammar of forms (geometric constructions).

In 1957 Jean-Claude Farhi returned from a trip to Colombia, where he met and befriended the artist Antonio Ascona, who would become a major influence on his artistic development. Farhi took drawing courses at the École des Beaux Arts in Nice, France; later, after briefly dabbling in painting, he dedicated himself solely to static sculpture: "Motorcolor" (1966-67) and "Chromplex" (1960-70) stand out as representative works. He has created several metal and plexiglas sculptures which made reference to the machinist and mechanical civilization of the era, as well as to the dialogues of the École de Nice and the "Nouveaux Réalistes". (Pierre Restany would later dedicate a beautiful monograph to Farhi in 1995). Soon after, Farhi was widely recognized for an exhibition called "Chromplex" (chrome + plexiglas), which debuted at the gallery of Iris Clert in 1968.
During the same year, Farhi assisted César with his "Expansions" project and toured Europe alongside him. The new techniques and materials cultivated throughout the 1970s generated many new endeavors. At the Polivar factory in Italy, Farhi experimented with the use of a new material called polymethyl methacrylate, a substance as hard as marble and as transparent as crystal. He appropriated this new material in the late 1960s, and it allowed him to execute, with great precision, such pure geometric constructions as discs, prismatic pillars, columns and cylinders. The transparency of polymethyl methacrylate gave Farhi a way to introduce color in its most decorative form. The rectilinearity or spheres of different colors allows a new relation between the plastic rhythms and volumes. Farhi propelled a new kind of formalism which realized its functionality in the construction and creation of "Sculptures luminaires" (part of an initiative lead by Philipe Durand Ruel and Jean Marc Rossi, 1969), a tric-trac table from the thirteenth century which morphed into "Backgammon" (1970); the furnishing of apartments (such as the dining room of Rothschild Bank in Paris, Gunter Sachs’ room in the Palace Hotel in Saint Moritz, and the private home of Ernest Wilhelm Sachs in Rome.

Farhi continued to gain international renown and respect, and in 1973 Aimé Maeght organized a retrospective of his work, sponsored by the Maeght Foundation. After an installation in New York in 1981, Farhi grew close to Arman, who encouraged him to create massive, imposing pieces. Farhi undertook, always using plastic materials, monumental works such as "Skylight" (1989), "New Canaan" (located in Connecticut), and "Dissémination" (1990, located outside the Nice airport). The latter is the largest work of art ever created in polymethyl methacrylate, by which Farhi combined multiple elements such as surface, volume, space and color through an assemblage of volume in prismatic sections in search of a united global effect.
After 1991, Farhi began to incorporate iron in his works. Abandoning lacquered metal and elementary colors in 1994, he tackled the creation of monumental, exterior sculptures in raw steel. Following the antagonistic system of voids and fills that he originally experimented in "Streamline" (1983/ 1990), Farhi constructed static geometric structures that imprisoned voids in a spatial design ("Le casque d’Achille"). His steel sculptures are much like visual forms erected in space. Many of Farhi’s contours and edges are not only markers of delineation but also directory lines that allow the eye to follow a trajectory of movement. His undeniably beautiful constructions (somewhat feminine when composed of plexiglas and masculine when made of steel) are the results of a perfect system.

Sarah David

Selected Works

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Pinboard

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