2018 marks Suzanne Tarasieveʼs fortieth anniversary as a gallerist. Through the exhibition Insoumises Expressions she shares her passion for the German artists she has promoted and represented for twenty years, who have become a part of art history.

Moving forward isnʼt always easy but children donʼt have to endure the same past as their parents. Suzanne Tarasieve understood this. Which made the challenge even more interesting. She had assimilated the words of the foppish ʻdithyrambicʼ Markus Lüpertz: ʻAbove all, donʼt die with the problems of your time.ʼ The year was 1987. Barbizon. At a time when she only exhibited French artists (the painters of a poetic reality, Limouse, Legueult, Terechkovitch, Sabouro, the last to have known Modigliani, Soutine, Matisse), she discovered Baselitz through Heinz Peter Schwerfelʼs film. It was a revelation.

1989 was a time of great upheaval: the fall of the Berlin Wall. Visiting the Vendée as she did every summer, in 1990 Suzanne saw the extraordinary exhibition of Georg Baselitzʼs works curated by Didier Ottinger at the Musée de l'Abbaye Sainte-Croix in Les Sables-d'Olonnes: ʻI walked attentively through all the rooms, I was the only person in a venue charged with a strong creative energy. That day I had the impression that I was participating in the birth of something very important. Those images of upside-down men. At the time Baselitz was 52 years old, I decided to try and meet with him.ʼ

ʻIn 1991, I visited Berlin for the first time. The cityʼs energy was electrifying. At the Martin-Gropius-Bau, I saw the Metropolis exhibition. They were all there: Baselitz, Lüpertz, Penck, Immendorff, Kieffer, Richter. Here I made the acquaintance of a wonderful man, Rudolf Springer, Baselitzʼs first dealer. I enjoyed talking with him about his rich life: he was 90 years of age. He introduced me to Michael Werner. The very touching Benjamin Katz also became a figure in my circle of Berlin friends. This photographer with his sharp gaze represented the living memory of all of these artist friends since their time at the academy. In the evenings, we would end up at the Paris Bar, a mythical venue run by Michael Würthle, artist, actor, singer and musician. This was the meeting place for actors of the Berlin arts scene. In 2011, at Loft 19 in Belleville I organized the exhibition Le Paris Bar à Paris. What a wonderful adventure!

From the ʻ90s onwards, I regularly attended the openings of large Baselitz exhibitions all over the world. Detlev Gretenkort, the artistʼs gracious assistant would become a dear friend. Iʼve been to Baselitzʼs château in Dernebourg, his summer home near Munich, I was there for his birthdays, and his eightieth this year which coincided with his retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler.

In 1998 Marcel Brient introduced me to Fabrice Hergott, a young curator at the Centre Pompidou. A specialist in German art, he was the author of my first catalogue for a joint exhibition on Lüpertz and Baselitz. In 2000 I invited Eric Darragon to discover Markus Lüpertzʼs Düsseldorf studio. This painter-sculptor was already famous for his German paintings but also for his penchant for Poussin and other French loves, Picasso, Rodin, etc.

From 2001 to 2018 the gallery has regularly exhibited Lüpertz, Penck, lmmendorff and Polke who had begun to emerge in the 1960s, and most of whom came from the East, but were a little lost in post-reunification Germany. The identities they had conserved and their rebellious work were a sign of their talent and difference. Each work in this exhibition has been chosen for its quality and the period its represents in each painterʼs career.

I would like to thank Eric Darragon whose text for the catalogue Insoumises Expressions provides an overview of the great history of German painting, particularly after the Second World War. His numerous publications (Baselitz - Charabia et basta : entretiens avec Eric Darragon for example) have largely contributed to allowing the German arts scene to become known in France.ʼ