Bernard Frize

The French artist Bernard Frize creates expansive, colourful canvases that revel in the intricate details of their own conceptual framework. Born in 1949 in Saint-Mandé, a suburb of Paris, he is known for his distinct artistic style that combines geometric rigour with an emphasis on process and materiality. Frize’s overall aesthetic can be described as abstract yet is precise and controlled, with paintings featuring intricate patterns, grids and repeated motifs that evoke a hypnotic sense of order and structure.

‘I don’t know why one comes to art’, he once stated. ‘In my family, there was nothing leading me to art.’ Frize’s father served as a soldier in World War II and various French colonial wars, while his mother was a housewife. Frize initially pursued studies in arts school in Aix-en-Provence and Montpellier but eventually dropped out, finding it difficult to reconcile his political engagement with his desire to create art.

In the early 1970s, Frize relocated to Paris, where he established his own silkscreen printing workshop. During this time, he provided printing services for fellow artists like Pierre Soulages. To supplement his income, he also worked as a ski instructor during the winter months. In 1976, he came back to painting in his spare time, and held his first exhibition a year later. This was a challenging period for painting as an art form, particularly in France, where Conceptual and Minimal art were gaining prominence, and artists tended to eschew traditional mediums.

For Frize, the process of discovering his unique way of creative expression was mediated by self-reflection. He found his language, he stated, ‘first of all, by being less ambitious, not thinking that I would change the world […] Before being political, a work of art has to be a work of art.’

This new intellectual approach came to fruition in 1977, when Frize embarked on a significant series that featured an abundance of intricate, intersecting vertical and horizontal lines in a vast selection of colours. This body of work, whose repetitive nature incorporated a contemplative, ritualistic quality, aimed to demonstrate that even a minimal practice could produce complex forms without the need for specialised expertise. Beneath the seemingly mindless structures of intersecting lines, however, Frize sought to depict a world that would respond to our collective search for meaning.

The production of Frize’s works involves a precise set of formal guidelines. Relying on his two assistants, a restricted colour palette and large brushes, he has compared his creative approach to a methodical, almost industrialised process. 

While Frize’s work draws inspiration from the traditions of Colour Field painters like Ad Reinhardt and Minimalists such as Barnett Newman, it distinguishes itself by emphasising the importance of his tools, which he sees as collaborative partners and just as crucial as the artist’s hand.

Over the course of four decades, Frize has continuously interrogated the nature and significance of painting. In his view, painters are akin to philosophers, attempting to grasp existence itself and projecting their discoveries onto the canvas. Through his artistic journey, he deals with profound questions in an attempt to unravel the enigmatic essence life.

Frize’s work has been exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions in prestigious institutions. Recently, it was the subject of ‘Sans repentir’, a large retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.