Alain Clément (b. 1941, France)
A Sculptural Thinker of Visual Rhythm in Contemporary French Art
For several decades, Alain Clément has played a pivotal role in the evolution of French abstraction, continuously expanding the dialogue between painting and sculpture. A self-taught artist who began his practice in the early 1960s, Clément has consistently explored the dynamism of form and color through rigorous formal experimentation and structural reconfiguration. In parallel, he contributed significantly to arts education in France, serving as professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier and later as director of the art school in Nîmes.
Clément’s work transcends the traditional boundaries of pictorial representation. His forms unfold as gestures—fluid, rhythmic, and architectural—transforming the act of viewing into a sensory and spatial experience. The bold curves and chromatic fields he employs are not merely visual, but corporeal; they lead the viewer to see, move, and perceive in new ways. While originating from the canvas, his practice extends naturally into three-dimensional space, resulting in what could be called sculptural painting or painterly sculpture.
Since the mid-1990s, Clément’s vocabulary has become increasingly refined, revealing a heightened tension between structure and color. These mature works demonstrate the culmination of his decades-long inquiry into the sculptural logic of abstraction, where surface and volume engage in a nuanced, formal dialogue.
Clément's work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and is held in major public collections, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and Kunsthalle Hamburg, among others.
At its core, Alain Clément’s art redefines abstraction as an embodied, temporal, and spatial philosophy. His lines, planes, and chromatic forms are not simply aesthetic devices, but visual propositions through which the viewer encounters rhythm, motion, and thought.
