Jean-Claude Prêtre

The cultural elements that Jean-Claude Prêtre's painting takes charge, only reinforce the extreme sensuality of the work. Here and there the strength of this painting is confirmed. It brings together opposites and pushes them to a sort of confrontation. It leads our thought or our reverie to represent to ourselves what are the vital dynamics of the world that is given to us to see… Everything is movement, everything is driven in exchanges between terms -lines, colours, materials- which are either close to each other, or appear quite opposite. These closenesses and these sharp contrasts create for the eye a thousand impulses « to see »: to see with an ever-fresh eye the sensible world… This movement of the visible is so intense, it carries so far the imagination that it evokes the mares in the poem of Parmenides because they are one of the most striking metaphors of artistic thought: the mares that carry me away have led me on the road rich in revelations of the divinity, a road which crosses the dwellings of men to accompany the one who knows to see.