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ARMAN
Arman, born Armand Fernandez on 17 November 1928 in Nice and died in New York on 22 October 2005, was a French artist, painter, sculptor and visual artist, renowned for his ‘accumulations’. He was one of the first to use manufactured objects directly as pictorial material, which he saw as extensions of the human being, continuously growing and multiplying.
The only son of Antonio Fernandez, a furniture and antiques dealer of Spanish origin, and Marguerite Jacquet, who came from a family of farmers in the Loire region, the young Armand showed an early aptitude for drawing and painting. After graduating from high school, he studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Nice (now the Villa Arson), then at the École du Louvre. He met Yves Klein and Claude Pascal at the judo school they attended in Nice in 1947. With his two friends, he became interested in Eastern philosophies and Rosicrucian theory. At the end of 1957, Arman, who signed his works with his first name in homage to Van Gogh, decided to drop the ‘d’ from Armand and made his artist's signature official in 1958, on the occasion of an exhibition at Iris Clert's gallery. From 1961 onwards, Arman developed his career in New York, where he lived and worked half the time, alternating with his life in Nice until 1967, then in Vence until his death. In New York, he first stayed at the Chelsea Hotel until 1970, then in a loft in the SoHo neighbourhood and, from 1985 onwards, in his building in TriBeCa, where he died in 2005.
PAST EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION):
2017: Arman 1954-2005, Fondazione Terzo Pilastro, Rome, Italy
2016: Arman accumulations 1960-1964, Galerie Templon, Paris, France
2013: Cycles, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, United States
2011: Arman retrospective, Musée Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland
2010: Arman, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
