Brunschwig Burstein

Private Art Gallery Visit Series

March 12th, 2025 @ Hélène Lamarque

Columbia alumni were welcomed by Héléne Lamarque, gallerist, at her Paris residence for a private guided tour of works by French artist Colette Brunschwig and Yaël Burstein.

Colette Brunschwig (b 1927, Le Havre)

Brunschwig belongs to a generation of female painters active in the Parisian art scene after the Second World War. Like Pierette Bloch, she studied with the Cubist painter André Lhote in the late 40s. It was also around then that she met the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, with whom she kept up a frequent correspondence. In 1952, she exhibited for the first time at the legendary Galerie Colette Allendy. As a representative of metaphysical abstraction, her work feeds off French existentialism in a post-war context marked by such philosophical tendencies alongside the sweeping movement of abstraction in painting. Chinese ‘literati’ painting is a central reference in Brunschwig’s historic paintings and drawings, which developed around notions of a ‘third dimension’ between writing and images. With the use of ink she seeks to transcend the paper, both physically and philosophically speaking.

Yaël Burstein (b 1974, Israel)

Burstein’s artistic practice focuses on the relation between mental and physical spaces. She collects ready-made images of empty interiors, natural landscapes, and ethnic and tribal masks in order to re-appropriate them into photo-collages, two dimensional sculptures, and site-specific wallpapers fitted to merge with the walls of the exhibition space. Through these various techniques she challenges the borders between the different media in which she operates and diverts the viewer’s attention from the artifact as such to the space it occupies and the one it creates. In this she calls for a blurring of the fundamental distinctions between the object and the spatial context in which it resides.

This exhibition brings together two artists whose questions and approaches to painting—as an act, expression, and object—differ yet complement each other, creating a rich dialogue between them.

Colette Brunschwig
Sans-titre, 1981
Oil on canvas, 45 x 70cm

Yaël Burstein
Untitled, 2023
Oil on magazine, 21 x 27cm

ABOUT THE SERIES

Many art enthusiasts among our alumni have expressed a desire to explore contemporary art and understand the process of building an art collection, often wondering, “Where do I even begin?”

This series was created to address these questions and more. Each visit includes a guided tour led by an artist or curator, followed by a discussion at a Paris art gallery. It provides a unique opportunity for alumni and galleries to connect, fostering meaningful relationships around the world of contemporary art.

Posted by Victor Schaub Wong ’91 GSAPP