Dado (painter)

Dado's painting and drawing activities extended across almost six decades. His paintings are mainly oil painting on linen but he also used acrylic paint and wood or even metal plates as supports.

Oil painting on linen – untitled, 1997

Though his creative world is highly recognizable, his style and painting technique evolved along the years. While painting, he conducted a permanent search for the essence of energy, progressively abandoning details and fine techniques in favour of more colourful and dynamic compositions.

An illustration of this evolution can be seen in large paintings such as Les Limbes or Le Massacre des Innocents (1958–1959), La Grande Ferme. Hommage à Bernard Réquichot (1962–1963), Le Diptyque d'Hérouval (1975–1976) and L'École de Prescillia (2001–2002), in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris.

From the 1990s, Dado also involved himself in several ambitious fresco projects. The four most noticeable achievements are a blockhaus in Fécamp (Normandy), the embassy of the IVth International in Montjavoult (near Hérouval), a set of frescos in a former vine industry building in Domaine des Orpellières, Hérault and a Last Judgment fresco in the former chapel of a leper colony in the town of Gisors, Eure.

Drawing had been present in Dado's creative means of expression since his beginnings. The artist initially used pencils and India ink. He also resorted to mixed techniques using gouache, pencils and India ink, realising impressive collages.

Dado realised his first engraving (a dry-point) in 1966 in Georges Visat's workshop. He was also interested in lithography. Dado started exploring the techniques of engraving (copper-plate engraving and etching) with the help of Alain Controu in Normandy in 1967. Their collaboration continued until the 1990s.

Engraving on copper-plate – untitled, 2004

He continued a substantial work in this domain, including several years in the 1980s in the Lacourière-Frélaut Engraving workshop in Paris and in an engraving workshop close to Hérouval (collaboration with engraver Biel Genty). A part of his engraving work features in the collections of the Département des estampes et de la Photographie of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Sculpture played a particular role in Dado's creation, as premises can be seen as early as in 1962 but most works were made in the 2000s until his death. In 1962, Dado's first achievement in sculpture was a pole using cattle bones collected in a knacker's yard.[2]

In 1968, Dado exhibited a Citroën Traction Avant car in the CNAC, Paris. The car wreck appearance was totally changed by a profusion of bones. Dado returned mainly to sculpture in his last decade of creation. In 2009 and under the auspices of Montenegro, a set of 27 sculptures Les Elégies Zorzi was exhibited in the Zorzi palace during the Venice Art Biennale.[3]

Temporary Installation of Sculptures by the artist, autumn 2010

From the mid-1990s to 2000, the artist also explored the use of ceramics as a medium for his creation. A most noticeable achievement in this field is a set of ceramics tiles in tribute to French writer Irène Némirovsky.[4]

A fervent books collector and reader, Dado found opportunities to work with writers, poets or essayists, who most of time were friends of him. Having met French writer Georges Perec, Dado illustrated Alphabets, a book dedicated to word play (1976). After Georges Perec's death, Dado would work on a second version of the book, mainly consisting in enriched illustrations of the first version.

In 1985, he worked on a series of 9 dry-point engravings to illustrate Le Terrier by Franz Kafka, at the Lacourière-Frélaut workshop.[5]

In 1989, he illustrated Le Bonheur dans le crime by Barbey d'Aurevilly published with the Imprimerie nationale. Two important collaborators of Dado were the writers Claude Louis-Combet and Pierre Bettencourt. Bettencourt and Dado produced illustrated versions of Les plus belles Phrases de la Langue française (1990), Voyage sur la Planète innommée (1990) and Les Négriers jaunes (1995).

Their collaboration started in 1984 when Pierre Bettencourt wrote a text for an exhibition catalogue of paintings inspired by Buffon's work.[6] As a son of the teacher of biology, Dado was fascinated by natural science.

Claude Louis-Combet, a long-time friend, and Dado produced several books. Some of those texts were specifically written in order to be published with illustrations of Dado. Including those is Les Oiseaux d'Irène (2007), a personal tribute of both artists to writer Irène Némirovsky and Dadomorphes & Dadopathes, with 5 engravings by Dado, published with Deyrolles in 1992.

In the 2000s, Dado worked with Jean-Marc Rouillan with the publishing of Les Viscères polychromes de la Peste brune, 2009.[7]

• In 1993, Dado took part to the production design of Handel's Tamerlano for the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, direction Jean-Louis Martinoty, conductor Roy Goodman.
• In 1996, Dado renewed his experience in production design with the world premiere of Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez of Stavros Xarchakos, based on a poem by Lorca, direction Pierre Jourdan, in the Théatre Impérial de Compiègne, France.

Dado realizes his first digital collages from 1996 in the printing workshop of his sister, Marija. Some of these works will be reproduced later in the Swiss art review Trou.[8]

Several digital collages based on photographs by Domingo Đurić were shown at the Venice Biennale in 2009. From 2007, Dado devoted himself to the creation of a website with the help of his son-in-law, a virtual antimuseum, The Dado Syndrome.[9]

In 2010, as a virtual museum, for its English version, the website was granted by ICOM permission to use the top-level domain .museum[10] which was limited exclusively to museums until 2018, when AFNIC was designated by ICOM as the world registry operator for .museum and relaxed eligibility rules.[11] The site is trilingual: French/Montenegrin/English.