Mennessons's key themes: Music

As he had always wanted to leave the trace of movement in space on the canvas or paper surface, Mennessons tried to fix the trace of internal turmoil felt when listening to music which unfurled in time. Bach supplied him with the pretext of a joyous writing, scratched and ordered around a centre.

In the 1962 drawing Sibelius sans retour (Sibelius without return), undertaken while listening to the composer’s sad waltz, the vortex of these forms reflects that of the waltz.

Mennessons also found himself within the world of jazz, associated with the end of the Second World War with its ambiance Saint Germain des Prés and of the sublime suffering expressed by among others Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow, Telonius Monk, which often accompanied his working hours.