MASAE BESSHO (1945-1995)

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Masae Bessho (1945-1995)
Born in Fuquoka - Japan in 1945After studying Fine Arts in Japan, she moved to Paris and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She died in Paris in 1995.
It is inevitable for certain great artists to be recognized when they have left us... As with my friend Masae, they often leave us with strange and magnificent work.
As far back as my memories of her go back, whether at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts or later in her isba on rue du Borrégo, I discovered, I resurrected a very beautiful Japanese Madonna, with pagoda-shaped hair. jet black.
At the beginning, upon her arrival in Paris, she painted with painful concentration disheveled, swirling, vibrant paintings of turgid red and intense blacks - of a lumpy material, always unsatisfied, she would start again, adding, scratching, covering old paintings that had ceased to satisfy her.
Later, after leaving school, her painting underwent a profound transformation as if finally having her own studio, her own universe, had pushed her to profound metamorphoses.
The arabesque compositions disappeared, gradually replaced by rigid compartmentalized structures. Yellow invades his palette, always accompanied by bright red and peachy black, with a touch of sky blue sometimes, for hope perhaps...!
Her character had changed little, still distant, withdrawn, secretive, fulfilled when I came to visit her and admire her latest paintings at Borrégo.
Masae painted more than two hundred extraordinary paintings there, most of which disappeared... when the bulldozers of the city of Paris one day destroyed the village... a fatal day. No longer able to paint, driven from her territory, she took refuge in a mystical wandering where I no longer recognized her!
It remains an intense, superb, magical, unforgettable work. Yankel, Paris on 09/20/2003

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