Nouveau Réalisme

Arman (Pierre Fernandez, born in Nice in 1928) moved to Paris after graduation to study archaeology and oriental art. After returning to Nice in 1953, he devoted himself instead to abstract art and began collaborating with Yves Klein, which was to have a significant impact on his artistic development. After a typographical error in an exhibition catalogue at the legendary Galerie Iris Clert in Paris, in which the letter "d" had dropped from his name, Arman decided that henceforth he would sign his works only "Arman".

Fernandez Arman is the artist that explores reality. He strives to transform and sublimate artefacts into works of art. Everyday objects become poetry for the eye. Forks, women’s shoes, credit cards, bottle caps and revolvers. Cast, welded together or enclosed in plexiglass “vitrines”, these things are metamorphosed into a form of art that he calls “accumulations”.

There is something animated in Arman’s work – a provocation, a challenge, an inner power in the things in which his art resides – that links the past to our own age, and casts the soul and the body as one.