Didier Moreau is one of a handful of obscure artists whose work I go searching for now and then in the hope that more of it may have been posted somewhere. Moreau’s drawings first came to my attention via the marvellous Art Nouveau Revival 1900 . 1933 . 1966 . 1974 exhibition catalogue but details about either the artist or his work are scant, especially on Anglophone sites where more recent French artists tend to be marginalised at the best of times. Matters aren’t helped by there being several Didier Moreaus in the world, and the possibility that Didier the artist may not have produced a great deal of work after the early 1970s.
L’Amour, a portfolio of drawings from 1973 was discovered on an auction site. The drawings themselves date from 1970, and look very much like improvised pieces. The examples in Art Nouveau Revival were vaguely erotic in tone but distinctly Beardsley-like in style; the pieces here are much more erotic (hence the title) but with a style that’s closer to Hans Bellmer: all those fused bodies, multiplied limbs and sinuous, organic forms. If something like this can turn up out of the blue you have to wonder what else may come to light in the future.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gilles Rimbault redux
• Raymond Bertrand paintings
• Raymond Bertrand’s science fiction covers
• Gilles Rimbault revisited
• The art of Ran Akiyoshi, 1922–1982
• The art of Gilles Rimbault
• The art of Jim Leon, 1938–2002
• The art of Sibylle Ruppert
• The art of Bertrand
I’m half convinced he did some art for the french Fiction magazine, in the same years as Raymond Bertrand did (sadly, I don’t own a collection of these anymore, thus I can’t check).
Yes, he’s of that circle, as is Gilles Rimbault. All three share that slightly surreal approach to erotica that the French seem to favour. Plexus magazine featured this kind of art so I can imagine Moreau’s work having appeared there as well.