Ariane BERGRICHTER

Here is a world teeming with ballpoint pens and felt tip pens, cafés, people seated at tables, windows with a view on the street, tram stops, passersby and artists, old ladies with small dogs straining at the leash, waiters and workers. “It’s simply crazy the number of tiles I need…” says a roofer amongst the tumult of images of drawings sketched from life in the heart of Brussels at the end of the 1980s, beginning of the 1990s. “It’s simply amazing …”, the number of sketches, beer coasters, bits of sticky paper, the hours spent observing the world go by in bars and assembling it all together, so that Ariane Bergrichter could turn the complex psyche of her life into a work of art. When she passed away in 1996, there were so many written notes and sketches that bore witness to how difficult her life had been. Her daughter stuffed them all into a suitcase and, some 20 years later, they emerged to reveal this remarkable work. In 2018, the assembled drawings of Ariane Bergrichter were exhibited for the first time at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. Now, with SMILE. I LOVE IT! in 2022 the ART ET MARGES MUSEUM exhibited the first monographic exhibition of this artist’s work.