A seminal figure in the Supports/Surfaces movement, Noël Dolla has, since the late 1960s, pursued a radical inquiry into painting—its materials, its gestures, its very limits. Trained in Nice and a pupil of Claude Viallat, he played a key role in redefining pictorial practice, liberating it from the confines of the traditional frame.
Into his work, he brought humble materials—tarlatan, cleaning rags, dishcloths, shade sails—objects of daily life, which he dyes, folds, crumples, or suspends. The canvas becomes not a passive surface, but a living one: mobile, porous, and pierced by light.
His Tarlatanes series, begun in 1969 and still ongoing, forms a cornerstone of his oeuvre. These often large-scale works explore the transparency of fabric, tension in space, and a restrained gesturality that flirts with minimalism. Other series, such as the Sniper Paintings—made by projecting paint through a compressed air device—underscore his fascination with the raw energy of the gesture, while subtly questioning the very notion of authorship.
Noël Dolla has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at Villa Arson, the Musée Matisse in Nice, and Ceysson & Bénétière in New York. His work is held in major public collections, among them the Centre Pompidou, MAMAC Nice, and FRAC PACA. As a long-standing professor at Villa Arson, he has shaped generations of contemporary artists.
Through a body of work that is uncompromising, luminous, and fiercely free, Noël Dolla continues to reaffirm painting as a boundless space for experimentation.