Charlotte Calmis

Charlotte Calmis , born the July 29th 1913 with Alep (Syria) and deceased in 1982 with Paris, is a woman painter and poetess.

Childhood and arrival in Paris

Of Jewish origin, high in Egypt with Héliopolis, educated at the nuns and arrival with Paris in 1937 in the burning desire to paint, Charlotte Calmis is representative of these many artists of foreign origin who made the force and the creativity of the French artistic scene until in the years 1970.

1947: exposures of its works and installation in Saint-Tropez

It is registered as of the shortly after the Release in the current of the lyric abstraction. Thus, in 1947, it takes part in the exposure “the dazzled Hands”, organized to the Galerie Maeght in Paris. It also exposes to the gallery of Luxembourg and the Arnaud gallery. With her husband, the sculptor Tony Lazzerini, it settles in midday, with Saint-Tropez, where find themselves each summer of the artists like Vera Pagava, Barta, Rezvani, Guidette Carbonell, who will become his/her friends. It is then one of the great “Muses” tropéziennes.

1955: died of his/her husband

With died of her husband, in 1955, it engages in the research deepened on energies of the color, as well on the side of the Gurdjief groups, the astrologer Jean Carteret, as kabbalist Carlos Suarès with which it works the chromatic hyperbole.

1961: the biennial ones of Chin

In 1961, it settles with Menton, where it joined the group of Nice and takes part regularly in Biennial of Chin where its work is noticed.

May 1968: question of the recognition of the creation of the women and their place in the City

In 1968, after an attempt at installation in Israel, it returns to France where events of May 68, then the birth of the Liberation movement of the women in 1970 pose in an acute way, in its own life as in that of his/her partners in painting, the question of the recognition of the creation of the women and their place in the City.

Charlotte Calmis meets the MLF: she founds association the Spiral

Charlotte Calmis painted in the years 1960 in the shade of her male fellow-members of the fabrics of a great artistic quality (semi-officially recognized), it meets holding them of the MLF with the beginning of the year 1970. She becomes aware that its identity of woman was occulted by the misogyny of the artistic mediums.

In 1972, it founds association the Spiral, (one of the regroupings of women the most active artists of the time), “ in the intention to help the women to join again with their creative potential ”.

Esthetics of joining, poetic writing

It engages in an esthetics of the joining which it approaches like a “subversive speech” on the City.

Parallel to this “research of the identity”, its painting is directed towards what it calls “the concrete figurative one”, while continuing the “coudrage”, and of singular works like “jams metaphysics”.

She also writes several collection of poetry where appears a remarkable voice and a writing.

She takes part in documentary televised of Gaëlle Montlahuc, 10 years of feminism , diffused on Antenne 2 in 1982.

The same year, she dies in Paris.

Poems

“ Russet-red Songs of the female ”. Collection of poems, Editions German St of the Meadows, 1973.
“ Gaïa - psalms of incarnation ”. Books of the New Trade n°36-37, 1977.
“ Séraphine de Senlis ”, by Charlotte Calmis, translated by Mary Guggenheim. Womanart/Winter 77-78, vol. 2, n°2.
“ before guard is not where it is seen ”, Libération, Friday, July 13, 1979.
“ the time of the dungeons ”, Release, March 15th, 1979.
“ Between shade and light - History of a portrait painted… or bet on a glance ”, Pénélope n°3, Direction Marie-OJ Bonnet, autumn 1980.
“ Blue Tuesday ”, poem and drawings, re-examined Correspondences, n°1, Munich, 1982.
“ Route ”, in A. Dallier, Charlotte Calmis, painter and poet, the three spirals, Paris 1998.
“ Glances and other writings ”, Editions Breaths of Them, Paris, 2004.

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