Gast Michels

Gast Michels grew up in Consdorf in the immediate vicinity of the Luxembourg forest area of Mullerthal. While his mother managed household affairs, his father was a commercial agent. In his spare time, the latter enjoyed creating oil paintings of the Mullerthal. Between 1974 and 1980, Gast Michels studied fine arts at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts Saint Luc in Liège. In 1980, he moved back to Luxembourg, married and started teaching art at the Luxembourg Summer Academy and Lycée Nic Biver in Dudelange. He simultaneously taught evening classes at Lycée Technique des Arts et Métiers in Luxembourg City from 1982 onwards. His first son was born the same year, the second in 1984. Michels ceased working as a teacher in 1988 and began his career as a freelance painter, printmaker and sculptor. He occasionally worked in other mediums such as ceramics and tapestry. The subsequent deaths of his wife and parents between 1996 and 1999 affected both his personal life and artistic practice. During the last years of his own life, he lived and worked in Provence.

In 1967, teenaged Michels spent time as a warden at the "Consdorfer Scheier." At that occasion, he met artists who aimed at breaking with lyrical abstraction, a style that had dominated in Luxembourg since the mid-1950s. They exhibited newer art forms, such as assemblages and installations. The natural environment in Consdorf equally became a central source of inspiration for Michel’s later work. Accordingly, the material of the wood and the signs carved into the rocks and grottos form essential elements in Michels’ œuvre. In fact, he regularly collected tree parts in the forest, on the surface of which he created paintings. Similarly, in the late 1980s, the artist used a chainsaw - the tool of a forester - to make sculptures out of blocks of wood, which he subsequently painted (Kolberg 23).

The signs, which take the forms of stylised arrows, wheels, squares or animal heads, amongst other things, build fundamental elements in Michels’ works from 1987 onwards. Complementing the other abstract elements, the artist executed these figurative signs in a graphic, expressive manner. According to Michels, the symbols carry meaning. Additionally, humans’ silhouettes are a frequently recurring element. Michels is interested in humans amidst their natural and urban environment as well as their behavior within it.

Thereby, such alternations between two opposites, the forest and the city, the mystical and the real, the abstract and the figurative up to colour contrasts characterise the artist's work. The materials used, in addition to the often contrasting and monochrome (one-coloured) areas of colour, determine the composition of his art. These colour fields are characteristically blue and yellow. Occasionally, he completed the scheme of primary colours by adding red. As with sculpture and printmaking, Michels combines expressive, abstract and graphic styles.

On 28th February 1990, a storm devastated large parts of the Mullerthal. The artist described the following period as depressive, not least because he lost his direct, visual reference of the forest (Restany 8). Mainly still lifes emerged after this storm (the French translation nature morte applies more literally). Similarly, Michels created the Xylomorph series of works (xylos wood, morpho- form), in which he imprinted the shapes of broken branches on large canvases, using them as stamps. In later, less monumental works, he fixed branches directly to the canvas and subsequently painted the tree parts with acrylic paint.

Moreover, the artist began to use the computer for the design of his artistic work towards the end of the 1990s. Indeed, he designed works on the computer that he later completed with hand drawn elements. Likewise, he digitally designed sculptures, which he subsequently produced in iron and finally painted the iron with varnish in vibrant colours. According to the artist, it is especially this last step, which allows to further identify the artist as the author of the work, rather than the computer ( “Galerie de Luxembourg. Gast Michels.“). Consequently, Michels became increasingly interested in the subject and explored the human face in his paintings and serigraphs around 2003. He also integrated objects from everyday life. At the end of his career around the 2000s, Michels became increasingly interested in lettering and other graphical elements, which he employed in a repetitive manner.

Michel’s first solo exhibition took place at the Galerie Tetra in Wavre, Belgium, in 1983. His work was represented above all, yet not exclusively, by the Galerie de Luxembourg (between 1988 and 2006). In 2000, the Escher Theatergalerie showed the artist’s first retrospective exhibition. Luxembourg’s Musée national d’histoire et d’art (MNHA) and Cercle Cité organised Michel’s first posthumous retrospective show in 2022. In 1992, he participated at the World Exhibition in Sevilla.

Moreover, the artist occasionally experimented with other materials, media and fellow creatives. In 1993, for example, he worked with friend, artist and then-director of the Aubusson Tapestries, Jacques Fadat, on woven wall hangings. Likewise, he worked at Patrick Audevard’s (*1957) ceramics studio in the south of France in 2005. In addition, he exhibited with Nadine Kohl in 2011, over whose photographs Michels painted. Michels also collaborated with the famous French art critic Pierre Restany (1930-2003) for the publication Manifeste du naturalisme intégral (1991).

While still an art student, Michels became a member of the artists' association "Atelier de Recherches Artistiques et Culturelles" in Luxembourg. This association was committed to the professionalisation of artistic work in the Grand Duchy. It organised the 1979 sculptors' symposium at the Esplanade in Remich. Unprecedented until then, the members created sculptures outside, letting passers-by observe the artistic processes and finally left the sculptures behind as a gift to the public. Between 1987 and 1994, Michels was a member of the CAL’s board of directors. From 1988 to 1992, he was a member of the "Groupe Arts Plastiques de la Division Générale X" at the European Commission, to which he served as a vice president in the first two years of his membership.

In 1983, the year of his first solo exhibition, Michels was awarded the "Prix de la Peinture" at the 11th Biennale des Jeunes in Esch-sur-Alzette. At the occasion of the 1987 Salon du CAL, he won the "Prix de Raville" for his painting Arc/Flèche. The acrylic painting features elements typical of Michels: the black signs in the shape of an arrow and a wheel, surrounded by large areas of colour in blue and yellow. Furthermore, Michels obtained residencies at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris in 1983 and 2008. Moreover, a number of works can be found in public spaces, such as the Luxembourg École de commerce et de gestion (ECG) (‘School of business and management’) or the City Hall of Echternach as well as the collections of the MNHA and numerous Luxembourg communes and banks.

Based on the artist’s deep interest for the woods and their regular integration into his work, art critic Joseph Paul Schneider nicknamed Michels ‘forest man’ (“Gast Michels, homme des forêtsˮ). For what is known, Michels was the only post-war Luxembourg artist to receive art reviews from the highly acclaimed French critic Pierre Restany. The latter argued that Michel’s emblematic colour palette of blue and yellow resulted from the decomposition of the green colour, which is omnipresent in nature (Restany 6). According to the critic Lucien Kayser, the artist finds a stylistic compromise between the École de Paris and German Neo-Expressionism. Indeed, the pure, frequently dominant colour fields in Michels' works take on a guiding role (Vermast). Kayser argues that his echoes the approach of the aforementioned French abstract movement, for example that of Henri Matisse (1869-1954). At the same time, he notes that especially the figurative elements, such as the human figures or signs, create parallels to the Neuen Wilden, a movement of German Neo-Expressionism, which manifested itself in the 1970s. In particular, similarities to the works of Karl Horst Hödicke (*1938), a pioneer of the Neuen Wilden and New Figuration could be observed (Kayser).

Especially Michels’ sculptures challenge the limits of established categories of art genres. Indeed, by painting the sculpted wood, branches and iron, his art blurs the boundaries of painting and sculpture. Furthermore, at the occasion of some exhibitions, Michels either mounted large painted tree parts on the wall or equipped them with metal feet. The five meter long piece La poésie est l'épiderme du miracle (Grande Frise) (1989), may serve as an example of how Michels’ sculptures intervened with the gallery space and can thus be considered art installations. Similarly, with the integration of found branches into the canvas, paintings from the Xylomorph series challenge the boundaries of the two-dimensional painting and can be read as assemblages.

Works cited

J.B. “Wenn die Remicher Esplanade zum Bildhauer-Symposium wird.ˮ Tageblatt 17.07.1979: unknown. Print.

Kayser, Lucien. “Gast Michels.ˮ Luxembourg: Galerie Lea Gredt, 1987. Brochure.

Michels, Danièle. “Gast Michels. Wie ein Boxer.ˮ Revue 48 (1994): 31. Print.

Michels, Gast cited in Steffen, Maggie. “Un défi nouveau. Le peintre et ‘son drapeau.‘ˮ Tageblatt 01.03.1995: unknown. Print.

Michels, Gast cited in “Galerie de Luxembourg. Gast Michels.“ Revue 27 (1998): unknown. Print.

Schneider, Joseph Paul. “Gast Michels, homme des forêts.ˮ Luxemburger Wort 27.10.1989: unknown. Print.

Vermast, Elisabeth. “Galerie de Luxembourg. Zwischen Symbolen und Computer. Gast Michels und Kreationen von 1995 – 1998.ˮ Journal 26.06.1998: unknown. Print.

Restany, Pierre. "La Forêt : la vérité dans l’apparence." Gast Michels, edited by Kayser, Lucien, Pierre Restany, Gehard Kollberg and Galerie De Luxembourg. Luxembourg: Galerie De Luxembourg, 1991. Print, p. 5-9. 

Kollberg, Gehard. "Über die Natur der Werke von Gast Michels.“ Gast Michels, edited by Kayser, Lucien, Pierre Restany, Gehard Kollberg and Galerie De Luxembourg. Luxembourg: Galerie De Luxembourg, 1991. Print, p. 21-27.