On the one hand, Gaston Chaissac (1910-1964), painter-writer, in love with the marvellous of the everyday, solitary Vendean but letter writer with an incredible prolixity publishing in the N.R.F. On the other hand, iconoclastic Nordic artists coming from Co-penhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam - CoBrA, constituted in "International of the experimental artists", determined to shake up the Parisian scene since 1948. Benoît Decron has brought together two plastic universes with affinities of soul mates at the Soulages Museum "under the sign of the Snake", a mythical figure of formidable telluric power. If a first exhibition in 144 pieces co-produced with the Kunstmuseum in The Hague presented it in spring-summer 2021, focusing on CoBrA artists, the Soulages Museum gives primacy to Chaissac. And it awakens Rodez after a year and a half of Covidian stagnation by drawing on the formidable creative energy of the post-war period - the time when Pierre Soulages, now a hundred years old, left with his wife Colette to conquer the capital.

Extract from the interview with Benoît Decron by Pascale Lismonde published in the magazine Art Absolument n°99

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