FRANCOIS FIEDLER
FOUNDATION
FRANÇOIS FIEDLER
(1921 Kassa, Hungary - 2001 Paris, France)
François Fiedler was born in Kassa, started painting at the age of 5, and copied the masters at the age of 10, the artworks of
the child prodigy were showcased together with adult painters in the Salon of the Town Hall in Nyíregyháza. He participated at
the age of 13 in the London Annual Children’s Drawing Competition which was his first international group exhibition. During the
1940’s he took an active part in the Budapest art scene, the Hungarian state collected several of his works for its public
collections, like the Municipal Gallery and Museum of Fine Arts. He graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in
1946.
After World War II he settled in France, left behind both his native country and figurative painting, Fiedler immersed himself in
discovering abstract art. He was discovered by Miró, who saw one of his canvases in a gallery window, who introduced him to
the legendary dealer and publisher, Aimé Maeght and to his artists such as Chagall, Braque and Giacometti. Miró called him
“the painter of light”, he shared his own ateliér with Fiedler in the early years.
Miró recognized the characteristic, threefold nature of Fiedler’s talent – his complete mastery of techniques, his passionate,
innovative spirit and playful handling of materials which led Fiedler to a very rich oeuvre. These early years Fiedler found shelter
in the ’reality’ he created with his paintings. He soon developed what was to become his signature style: and infinite possibility
for the play of light and shadows on the canvases. Fiedler defined Miró’s impact on his art „Miró encouraged me and introduced
me to the world of calligraphy and gesture painting. He encouraged me to set my unconscious free. There are neither principles
nor rules. You cannot deceive art; I feel deep respect for it: you cannot deceive that which emerges from the unconscious”.
In 1951 as an accompaniment to the joint exhibition of Wassily Kandinsky and Albert Giacometti shown in Saint-Paul-de Vence,
Maeght presented Saul Steinberg, Pierre Tal-Coat,Pablo Palazuelo, Eduardo Chillida and Ellsworth Kelly, as well as Fiedler, as
the latest talents. From that point on, his works were regularly featured alongside those by major artists of 20th-century modern
art, such as Braque, Chagall, Calder, Chillida, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Miró, Matisse,Picasso, Riopelle and Tápies.
Fiedler was attracted to the process of painting was promoted by André Malraux that revealed the subjective expression of the
artist’s psyche. The key is “free association”. Fiedler began a work with a motif that was spontaneously developed until the work
was complete – until it looked and felt “right”. In this sense, there is no fundamental difference between the working method of
Pollock or Fiedler. A common trait of the works of the two artists is the multilayered paint applied on canvas. While the layers of
paint on Pollock’s canvases do not fully cover the canvas, so that one can literally see through it as far as the canvas, Fiedler
fully covered the canvas with thick paint. Although Fiedler was a member of New School of Paris he was utilizing the same
“process” as the Abstract Expressionists did in School of New York. He was influenced by Pollock’s and Rothko’s art. Pollock
with the unique technical method, Rothko with his large scale, color-field paintings. Instead of traditional tools Fiedler preferred
scrapes, knives, trowels, stones, sand. The surfaces are very sculptural and dimensional, they are scratched, scraped and
multilayered, relief-like.
“I entered the painting... I felt the dramatic force. The pictorial energy of canvas enchanted me. I felt the full freedom of the
rhythms. I recognized the duality in Pollock’s works - improvisation and precise interpretation at the same time” said Fiedler on
the occasion of Jackson Pollock “Retrospective” exhibition held at the Pompidou Centre,1982. Fiedler compared what he saw
there with his own painting process, which he called “controlled automatism”.
Octave Nadal art critic and professor at Sorbonne University positioned Fiedler’s role in art history1:
“The discovery for Fiedler, in the decade of fifties, for «an eye and a hand» (Manet), that is to say, for the technique and not for
history, was acquiring what would take him to a withdrawal from what is not form. This path of a personal technique has led him
to the space in as much as he limits the color and the new relationships of the texture, and, consequently, as the major part of
his canvasses testify since 1945 much before the actual theory of such pictorial techniques was proclaimed. These inventions
appear in his work before the proclamation or proclamations of the new theories of the pictorial informal. The true invention of
the informal in painting, the non form is so far the renewal of painting occurred towards the end of the figurative techniques that,
through successive exhaustion and destruction, had prepared for the absolute nakedness, the leap into the space. Fiedler
understood this intuitively. The instinct, the sagacity which have guided him always in his discoveries. In this he was, he is a
painter, and a great painter. Without worrying about the diverse and multiple ways that were opening then, he has followed this
technical discovery for two or three decades, alone, with continuity and constancy, in the discontinuous and in the non
figurative.”
Signalling the importance of his oeuvre, Fiedler´s works are included not only in major Hungarian public collections, such as the
Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery, but also in world-famous international collections, such as the Pollock-
Krasner House and Study Center, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, The San Diego Museum of Art and Harvard
Art Museums – Cambridge, the Musée National d´Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou, the Centre National des Arts
Plastiques (Fonds National d’Art Contemporain), Paris and Maeght Foundation - St. Paul de Vence, the Cabinet Cantonale des
Estampes, Vevey and the Bibliothéque Cantonale et Universitaires, Lausanne, Switzerland.
1 Octave Nadal “François Fiedler, after silence”, [1983] in François Fiedler [Palma de Mallorca: Pelaires Centre Cultural
Contemporani, 1990]
the child prodigy were showcased together with adult painters in the Salon of the Town Hall in Nyíregyháza. He participated at
the age of 13 in the London Annual Children’s Drawing Competition which was his first international group exhibition. During the
1940’s he took an active part in the Budapest art scene, the Hungarian state collected several of his works for its public
collections, like the Municipal Gallery and Museum of Fine Arts. He graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in
1946.
After World War II he settled in France, left behind both his native country and figurative painting, Fiedler immersed himself in
discovering abstract art. He was discovered by Miró, who saw one of his canvases in a gallery window, who introduced him to
the legendary dealer and publisher, Aimé Maeght and to his artists such as Chagall, Braque and Giacometti. Miró called him
“the painter of light”, he shared his own ateliér with Fiedler in the early years.
Miró recognized the characteristic, threefold nature of Fiedler’s talent – his complete mastery of techniques, his passionate,
innovative spirit and playful handling of materials which led Fiedler to a very rich oeuvre. These early years Fiedler found shelter
in the ’reality’ he created with his paintings. He soon developed what was to become his signature style: and infinite possibility
for the play of light and shadows on the canvases. Fiedler defined Miró’s impact on his art „Miró encouraged me and introduced
me to the world of calligraphy and gesture painting. He encouraged me to set my unconscious free. There are neither principles
nor rules. You cannot deceive art; I feel deep respect for it: you cannot deceive that which emerges from the unconscious”.
In 1951 as an accompaniment to the joint exhibition of Wassily Kandinsky and Albert Giacometti shown in Saint-Paul-de Vence,
Maeght presented Saul Steinberg, Pierre Tal-Coat,Pablo Palazuelo, Eduardo Chillida and Ellsworth Kelly, as well as Fiedler, as
the latest talents. From that point on, his works were regularly featured alongside those by major artists of 20th-century modern
art, such as Braque, Chagall, Calder, Chillida, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Miró, Matisse,Picasso, Riopelle and Tápies.
Fiedler was attracted to the process of painting was promoted by André Malraux that revealed the subjective expression of the
artist’s psyche. The key is “free association”. Fiedler began a work with a motif that was spontaneously developed until the work
was complete – until it looked and felt “right”. In this sense, there is no fundamental difference between the working method of
Pollock or Fiedler. A common trait of the works of the two artists is the multilayered paint applied on canvas. While the layers of
paint on Pollock’s canvases do not fully cover the canvas, so that one can literally see through it as far as the canvas, Fiedler
fully covered the canvas with thick paint. Although Fiedler was a member of New School of Paris he was utilizing the same
“process” as the Abstract Expressionists did in School of New York. He was influenced by Pollock’s and Rothko’s art. Pollock
with the unique technical method, Rothko with his large scale, color-field paintings. Instead of traditional tools Fiedler preferred
scrapes, knives, trowels, stones, sand. The surfaces are very sculptural and dimensional, they are scratched, scraped and
multilayered, relief-like.
“I entered the painting... I felt the dramatic force. The pictorial energy of canvas enchanted me. I felt the full freedom of the
rhythms. I recognized the duality in Pollock’s works - improvisation and precise interpretation at the same time” said Fiedler on
the occasion of Jackson Pollock “Retrospective” exhibition held at the Pompidou Centre,1982. Fiedler compared what he saw
there with his own painting process, which he called “controlled automatism”.
Octave Nadal art critic and professor at Sorbonne University positioned Fiedler’s role in art history1:
“The discovery for Fiedler, in the decade of fifties, for «an eye and a hand» (Manet), that is to say, for the technique and not for
history, was acquiring what would take him to a withdrawal from what is not form. This path of a personal technique has led him
to the space in as much as he limits the color and the new relationships of the texture, and, consequently, as the major part of
his canvasses testify since 1945 much before the actual theory of such pictorial techniques was proclaimed. These inventions
appear in his work before the proclamation or proclamations of the new theories of the pictorial informal. The true invention of
the informal in painting, the non form is so far the renewal of painting occurred towards the end of the figurative techniques that,
through successive exhaustion and destruction, had prepared for the absolute nakedness, the leap into the space. Fiedler
understood this intuitively. The instinct, the sagacity which have guided him always in his discoveries. In this he was, he is a
painter, and a great painter. Without worrying about the diverse and multiple ways that were opening then, he has followed this
technical discovery for two or three decades, alone, with continuity and constancy, in the discontinuous and in the non
figurative.”
Signalling the importance of his oeuvre, Fiedler´s works are included not only in major Hungarian public collections, such as the
Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery, but also in world-famous international collections, such as the Pollock-
Krasner House and Study Center, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, The San Diego Museum of Art and Harvard
Art Museums – Cambridge, the Musée National d´Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou, the Centre National des Arts
Plastiques (Fonds National d’Art Contemporain), Paris and Maeght Foundation - St. Paul de Vence, the Cabinet Cantonale des
Estampes, Vevey and the Bibliothéque Cantonale et Universitaires, Lausanne, Switzerland.
1 Octave Nadal “François Fiedler, after silence”, [1983] in François Fiedler [Palma de Mallorca: Pelaires Centre Cultural
Contemporani, 1990]
