American Pop Art master Jim Dine returns to Galerie Templon with a brand-new presentation of Göttingen Songs: a spectacular ensemble of five large hearts painted on canvas. Since the 1960s, Jim Dine has constantly explored themes of the self, the body and memory, through a personal iconography of hearts, skulls, clothes, tools and Venus. Hearts are one of the most representative themes in her work. For the artist, they are a symbol of femininity, but also of the painter’s palette, and can therefore be read as a form of self-portraiture.

In the series of five paintings entitled “Göttingen Songs”, Jim Dine refers to his painting studio in the student town of Göttingen, Germany, and to his memories of childhood and music. These works combine oil, acrylic and sand, in colorful abstract compositions that evoke a musical score but also the painter’s palette.

A pioneer of the Happening with Claes Oldenburg, Allan Kaprow and John Cage, and of Pop Art with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselman, Jim Dine has established himself more than ever as an essential artist of post-war American art. His first exhibition was at the Judson Gallery in New York in 1958. He subsequently exhibited at the Ileana Sonnabend Gallery in Paris from 1963 and at the Pace Gallery in New York from 1980. Wood, lithography, photography, metal, stone – he uses all techniques to overturn their rules and push them to their extreme limits. For him, the tool and the creative process are as crucial as the finished work.