Latona

Marc Desgrandchamps recently created three new lithographs for Lelong Editions on the presses of Atelier Michael Woolworth in Paris. The title of these lithographs, Latona, is discretely incorporated into each one of them. This is far from being a banal choice of name, as it evokes memories and popular and artistic culture; indeed, the same combination of sparse references that are often to be found in his pictorial compositions.

Latona is a jazz number recorded in 1965 by the organist Big John Patton and a particular favourite of the artist. On the sleeve of the album, Let’em roll, we see the silhouette of a woman, almost a shadow, in an exaggeratedly arched posture, and this image inevitably brings to mind the figures that regularly appear in his work. But the title also refers to the myth of Latona: a goddess persecuted by Juno, obliged to wander the world and hide between land and sea in order to give birth to Apollo and Diana. A myth of wandering that seems to be reflected in a number of the artist's works.

In addition to the colour lithographs, the exhibition will present works in black and white, enhanced lithographs and new small gouaches.

Marc Desgrandchamps, born in 1960, is a French painter whose work has been in exhibited in museums in Germany and France: Musée d'art moderne et contemporain in Strasbourg, Musée d'art contemporain in Lyon, Saarland Museum in Sarrebruck, Kunstmuseum in Bonn, the MNAM Centre Georges Pompidou and the Musée d’art moderne, both in Paris.