This series of pastel drawings on paper is the result of a study for the creation of wall frescoes, which were never produced, for André Bloc’s house in Meudon, a veritable laboratory of experimentation on the synthesis of the arts. Situated between pictorial works and the arts applied to architecture, these drawings question the representation of space through the intrication of straight or spirally-structured lines, of curved or angular forms, of lines and volumes, solids and voids. Their color range illustrates the artist’s interest in architectural polychrome, developed in different articles of Art d’Aujourd’hui. Carried out during the early years of the magazine and of the Espace group, this study reveals André Bloc’s closeness at the time with the advocates of geometric abstraction: most of the abstract artists of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, organized by Felix Del Marle, joined the Espace group and the editorial secretary of Art d’Aujourd’hui was none other than Edgar Pillet, co-founder with Jean Dewasne of the Atelier d’Art Abstrait. But beyond that, the freeness with line and the richness of the vocabulary used here attest to the particularly creative friction, in the artist’s work, between geometric neoplasticism from Van Doesburg and the free abstraction then emerging in Paris and New York.
