Amédée Cortier was a key representative of Belgian fundamental painting, alongside Marthe Wéry, Dan Van Severen and André Beullens. Emerging simultaneously in America and Europe in around 1965, the movement was rooted in the colour field painting of American artists Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt. Fundamental painting was concerned with the painting process and the exploration of essential elements such as line, colour, composition, medium, texture, material and method. It was closely related to minimal art, which also arose at this time. Fundamental painting rapidly acquired an international dimension – especially in England, America, Germany and Italy – through renowned artists such as Robert Ryman, Robert Mangold, Agnes Martin and Niele Toroni.
Amédée Cortier studied at KASK in Ghent from 1936 to 1942. He was a house painter by trade, which influenced his work. On the one hand, he focused on the artisanal aspect of painting, while on the other he was fascinated by the specific impact of colours on a range of surfaces. Cortier joined the Latem school upon graduation and painted landscapes, seascapes and still lifes in an expressionist style. In Latem, Cortier learned to recognise the importance of intuition in painting, an aspect that would later distinguish him from the more analytical Belgian fundamental painters.
Cortier’s work underwent a radical shift in 1949. After visiting an exhibition dedicated to Cubism, he developed a profound interest in the movement’s theoretical underpinnings. Amongst other things, he immersed himself in the work of André Lothe, the inventor of the golden section. Cortier’s work thus developed an analytical slant. In the 1950s, he painted cubist still lifes and landscapes, giving the background of his compositions as much importance as their subject matter. From the 1960s, he focused exclusively on abstraction and explored the relationships between colour, shape and texture. He also developed an intense interest in Piet Mondrian’s oeuvre and his similarly radical evolution from figurative expressionism to a pared-down analytical approach.
Cortier found international confirmation of his own artistic development in the work of Barnett Newman, Elsworth Kelly and Frank Stella that he saw at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1972, he travelled to New York and was captivated by Mark Rothko’s oeuvre, in which the boundary between form and colour is informed by emotion rather than pragmatism. Cortier’s paintings became more abstract and monumental with a profound sense of spatiality. He increasingly integrated the walls of exhibition spaces into or ‘around’ his paintings. He wanted “the painting to be looked at as an event, as an inherent part of reality” and rejected the idea that framed artworks were akin to independent worlds on the wall. The walls themselves needed to become paintings. Painting had to be part of life and our homes. Due to his early death in 1976, he could never fully realise this desire.
