Patrick Saytour

Patrick Saytour, who lives and works in Aubais, near Montpellier, became one of the founding members of the Supports/Surfaces movement, considered the last artistic avant-garde movement to emerge in France, following the collective exhibition entitled "La peinture en question" that took place in 1970 at the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art. Saytour, along with Claude Viallat, is considered one of the key members of this movement.

Saytour was born in 1935 in Nice. During his youth he combined art with theatre. He has always maintained a critical position toward the painting medium, and since the mid-1960s, his work has been based on the deconstruction of the usual elements of form, colour, format and frame, with works created from a wide variety of materials and objects, apparently trivial or even kitsch, which the painter has collected and stored for a long time. He uses a simple language in which, for example, paint is impregnated by folding and unfolding the supports, and other techniques such as burning, and even soaking and exposing works to the sun.

His works have been exhibited in both individual and collective exhibitions in museums and contemporary art centres in France and the rest of Europe, Asia and the United States. They are also found in important private and public collections, notably the Musée National d'Art Moderne and the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Cantini Museum in Marseille and the FRAC Franche-Comte in Besançon, among others.