ARMAN

Arman, the pseudonym of Armand Pierre Fernandez, was a French painter and sculptor, founder and leading exponent of the artistic movement called Nouveau Réalisme.

He was born in Nice in 1928, where he first attended the Decorative Arts School and later the Louvre School of Art in Paris.

After the early 1950s, the artist completely distanced himself from traditional painting and began producing the famous stamps, which he occasionally replicated on paper, then moving on to traces and imprints (Allures). His new pursuit of expression culminated in the 1960s when he started focusing on industrial and urban objects, breaking them apart, sectioning, and assembling them to give them a new, recontextualized life.

He described himself as “a painter who makes sculpture,” because his works have no clear boundaries and can be considered both painting and sculpture.

Nouveau Réalisme focused on marginal and unused objects of society, and Arman often used scraps and waste in his work, highlighting them through color.

Arman died in New York in 2005 and was buried in Paris.