
Soulages Museum, Rodez 25 January 2025 - 18 May 2025
Geneviève Asse
Le bleu prend tout ce qui passe
From 25 January to 18 May 2025, the exhibition Geneviève Asse. Le bleu prend tout ce qui passe brings together seventy works by French painter and engraver Geneviève Asse (1923-2021) at the Musée Soulages in Rodez. The Fondation Gandur pour l’Art is lending two artworks from its collection for the occasion.
CURATORS: BENOÎT DECRON ET MALIKA NOUI
Born on 24 January 1923 in Vannes, Geneviève Anne Marie Bodin adopted the pseudonym Geneviève Asse for her career as a painter and engraver. Geneviève Asse began painting works, characterized by their sober nature: ascetic still lifes, reminiscent of Bodegones, and the style of restrained, detached composition painted by Giorgio Morandi or Luis Fernàndez. Gradually, she veered towards an even purer form of abstraction, with associations of rectangular, horizontal blocks of colour in relatively vivid tones.
Since the 1970s, Geneviève Asse painted in blue. Her palette ranged from light to deep blue, it became her poetic trademark and her technique. This blue was not monochrome in a strict sense, but expressed passion, empathy with the sea and the sky, and with infinity itself. Over the years, blue increasingly gained ground: “The blue takes everything in its path,” she declared. Light, whether split, diffused, or nascent became the crux of Geneviève Asse's work. Hers was an inherent light, a kind of wide-open, horizontal landscape.
The exhibition at the Musée Soulages brings together some 70 works, primarily paintings on canvas and works on paper, drawings and engravings, including two pieces on loan from the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art. It is clearly oriented towards the transition from the reality of everyday life to informal compositions, by way of subtle and precious geometries. The exhibition also provides the opportunity for an inventory of the artist’s work, as well as Geneviève Asse’s catalogue raisonné.

MUSÉE SOULAGES RODEZ
Jardin du Foirail
Av. Victor Hugo
12000 Rodez
France
Find on Google Maps