Mennessons's key themes: Numbers

Mennessons’ training as an industrial designer made him sensitive to the dynamic energy which can come from numbers. In his early works they imposed their rigour over the choice of colours, limited by his plan. It was not until his later years that they prevailed like masters.

From 1969, in a series of canvases, gouaches and oil pastels on the theme of the Apocalypse, Mennessons favoured the number four and the square format. It was in the etchings where four colours change and rotate from the four corners that, from 1970, Mennessons exploited all the possibilities offered by this material: rigour, variety and freedom. His work within an architectural agency caused him to study and use the golden number, and he therefore created a grid of numbers with golden proportions, a matrix of works from 1975-1983.

The Indian inks, like his works on canvas or paper were ruled by the game of numbers and the sculptural universe would see a series of blocks on the ground in blue, yellow and red occupying space in different forms, all perfectly controlled. The so-called “geometric” art opens out in a coloured plot blended with black and white.