François Morellet
Recreation No. 7

1994
Existing artwork from the Zumtobel Collection

The French painter, sculptor and light artist François Morellet (1926 - 2016) is considered the greatest pioneer of minimalism in Europe and one of the greatest masters of geometric abstraction. He began creating abstract works in the 1950s. Together with Sérgio Camargo, Jesús Rafael Soto and Julio Le Parc, Morellet founded the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (Visual Art Research Group), which experimented with collective authorship and art based on kinetic and optical experiments. With the help of science and technology, the group created new forms of optical experience. Morellet based his compositions on the rules of geometry and mathematical progression, but also incorporated chance operations into the decision-making process.

The artwork is a graphic composition of different coloured, handwritten neon lines, plug connections, cables and a transformer on a canvas. The "Recréation" series is part of a series in which the artist practised copying children's drawings. He had selected sequences translated into neon and mounted on a canvas like a drawing.