Rets Jean

1910-1998

Born in Paris in 1910, Jean Rets was a fierce defender of a strict geometric abstraction but without coldness thanks to colour. This painter for whom everything was in the mind - he never painted from nature, even in his figurative period - had rallied the views of the Jeune Peinture belge after the war. After a period of decorative cubism, Rets began to construct the painting according to a purely intellectual game of plans. The last few decades led the artist to a more decorative, playful painting, more accessible no doubt to the common man, whose insensitivity to the music of space that colours and abstract forms orchestrated, he deplored.