French painter, born in 1931. A member of the Surrealist group from 1961.
Life
Armenian was the language of Jean Terrossian’s early childhood; French became the language of his culture. Before calling himself, self-mockingly, a “painter”, he readily lists his failed careers: tap dancer, cook, bar pianist.
In 1961 he joined the group gathered around André Breton. He took part in the café meetings and collective games, discovered Breton’s poem-objects, and there developed his attention to the “ricochets” of thought. His first published drawing appeared in 1963 in no. 5 of La Brèche, the review edited by Breton. The same year he co-signed the tracts La Voie inique (8 February) and the Lettre ouverte à Messieurs Duhamel, Mauriac, Maurois… (15 April). In December 1965 he appeared in the catalogue of the exhibition L’Écart absolu at the Galerie de L’Œil.
A painter, illustrator and maker of objects, he was the subject of a retrospective in Maubeuge in 2000 (catalogue La mémoire mise à sac). In 2010 the review L’or aux 13 îles devoted a feature to him.
The work
Terrossian himself distinguishes two manners: a first, of graphic and pictorial spontaneity, close to a classical beauty; a second, based on the Surrealist “beautiful as” and on involuntary mechanisms (slips, associations, puns). He paints in acrylic on canvas, sometimes with collage elements repainted by hand, as in Duchamp libre. His subjects come from everyday life: objects he dislikes (sports equipment, telephones), beaches and the sea, tributes to Marcel Duchamp, words painted in French. He is often likened to Narrative Figuration, from which he stands apart.
“My paintings start from and speak of my daily life, and it is the failures that drive them.” (Jean Terrossian, interview, Contretemps no. 8)
His work is slow: he sketches several compositions before choosing one, in what he describes as “a process of fermentation, then crystallisation”.
Exhibitions and collections
- L’Écart absolu, Galerie de L’Œil, Paris, December 1965.
- Retrospective, Maubeuge, 2000.
- Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, July 2023: Duchamp libre, c. 1974, acrylic on canvas, 117 x 80 cm.
- “Surrealist Prelude”, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, 7 June to 6 July 2024: En chute libre, c. 1965, oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm.
Looking back at their exhibitions
- Surrealist Prelude 2024