Georges Folmer

b. 1895, Nancy, France.

d. 1977, Kehl, Germany.

At the age of 15, Georges Folmer enrolled at the art school of his native town where he studied painting, sculpture and architecture for the next three years. While interned in Germany during the war, Folmer painted the scenery for a small theatre organized by the prisoners, who included well-known artists such as Etievant and Lucien Nat, the future star of the Baty theatre. After that, Folmer was sent as a prisoner on parole to Geneva, where he became a student at the art school there. He spent a year there before he fled to Algeria to avoid the war. Delighting in the light he found there, he discovered the colors which he used in his paintings during his travels in both Algeria and Tunisia.

Once the war was over, he decided against returning to Nancy and settled instead in Paris in 1919, where he became a regular exhibitor at, and then a member of, the Salons des Indépendants d'automne and at the Tuileries. Critics at the time remarked on his new style—citing a "solidity in construction" and "colourful cadence"—which would be his first move towards Cubism. From the Thirties onwards and without abandoning his Cubist vision, he studied the influence of Cubism in comparison with the first attempts at abstract art. In 1932, he met Auguste Herbin and was attracted by the young "Abstraction-Creation" movement. He continued developing his studies and his practical and technical research work on the Section d’Or and on the harmonic division of space, split up into different planes. In 1935, he exhibited at the first Salon d'Art mural alongside Delaunay, Albert Gleizes and Kandinsky. From then on, he totally expressed "non-imitative plastic art", according to Del Marle's definition. In 1939 his work was shown together with that of Frédo-Sides at the Galerie Charpentier. In 1942, he developed a new technique for his drawings, which he called "Monotypes", involving the superimposing of various printing inks applied with rollers or tools he devised himself. In 1949 at the Café du Globe he, Jean Gorin, Sergio Mǫyano Servanes and Etienne Beothy were among the first nine artists who, at Del Marle's initiative, made preparations for forming what was to become the Groupe Espace, whose famous manifesto he signed in 1952.