The French artist ben, best known for his handwritten slogans on a black background, died at age 88, taking his own life just hours after the death of his wife to whom he was married for 60 years, his family reported Wednesday. His wife Annie He suffered a stroke Monday night and died Wednesday, the couple’s two children said in a statement. Eve and François.
“Unwilling and unable to live without her, Ben committed suicide a few hours later at his home” in Saint-Pancrace, a district of the French Mediterranean city of Nice. “The world of culture has lost a legend,” said the Minister of Culture, Rachida Datipraising a “goldsmith of the language” with “humorous, sometimes satirical writing” and whose “art will continue to make France shine in the world.”
“In our children’s pencil cases, in so many everyday objects and even in our imagination, Ben left his mark, made of freedom and poetry, of apparent lightness and overwhelming depth,” added the president. Emmanuel Macron it’s a statement.
Police vehicles remained parked all Wednesday in front of the artist’s residence in Nice, while a forensic investigator and a prosecutor arrived at noon to investigate the causes of death, a journalist from the AFP. The precise cause of death was not immediately clear.
Born in Naples in 1935 as Benjamin Vautier In a French-Swiss family, Ben co-founded the so-called Nice school of artists with other Côte d’Azur-based luminaries, including Yves Klein. His “writings” (sentences often drawn with white paint on a black background) appear at first glance to have been devised by a schoolboy.
But they shake up the established notions of contemporary art with phrases like “What is art for?”, “What is new is always new?”, “What are you doing here?”, or “My biggest concern is me.” Ben championed the presence of art in everyday life and his works have been reproduced on backpacks, pencil cases and notebooks and also adorn tram stops in Nice.
Source: AFP
