Guido Molinari

In the spring of 2003, Molinari, hosted by René Blouin, had presented his reinterpretation of a work that had always haunted him: the book-poem Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard, akin to Mallarmé’s last will and testament, and a founding score of the modern age. For Molinari also, his chromatic frieze, a book projected in space – a dream the poet had always had – would stand as a last will and testament: both creators were to die a few months after the completion of their respective works. Today this last polyptic remains a road map for Mallarmé’s poem, and vice-versa, drawing the visitor to look at the pervasive music that emanates from them.

In the early 1950s, a youthful Molinari was struggling with a certain degree of mistrust towards the automatist painters, whom he found to be excessively rational in the execution of their works. He had decided to paint, in complete darkness, canvasses that would become unpredictable and arbitrary objects, and thus real automatist works. Bernard Teyssèdre, with his usual wisdom, would later write: “Given that censorship requires that the work be seen while it is in progress, one must paint without seeing, and then accept, without any possibility of retouching, the emergence of the unpredictable.”