Gasiorowski's 'War' as Personal History in Nîmes Retrospective

A retrospective of Gérard Gasiorowski (1930–1986), titled 'Recommencer, commencer de nouveau la peinture,' runs from May 19 to September 19, 2010, at Carré d'art – Musée d'art contemporain de Nîmes. Curated by Frédéric Bonnet and Éric Mangion, the exhibition deliberately disregards chronological order, embracing the artist's own practice of falsifying dates and mixing periods. The show highlights discordances and ruptures rather than linearity, revealing alternative readings of his work. A central focus is the series 'La Guerre' (1974), which Gasiorowski described as a massive suite of war imagery—tanks, soldiers, planes—on paper, incorporating objects and toys, some partially burned. Critic Jean-Yves Jouannais argues that while many interpretations frame 'La Guerre' as a meta-commentary on painting, the series also functions as history painting rooted in personal trauma: Gasiorowski's father was killed by a German bomb in 1940 when the artist was ten. Jouannais draws parallels to French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870), where painters like Alphonse de Neuville focused on isolated acts of heroism rather than grand panoramas. Gasiorowski's work similarly narrows perspective, emphasizing small-scale, intimate views of battle. A bilingual French/English catalogue is published by Hatje/Cantz with texts by Bonnet, Mangion, Laurent Manœuvre, Erik Verhagen, and an interview with Thomas West.