Lemaire and the Galerie Derouillon present the work of the late American artist, Joseph Elmer Yoakum. Yoakum’s idiosyncratic views of landscapes, presented for the first time in France, are on display until Sunday, the 13th of March. A meticulous surveyor, collecting topographic data in the manner of those who probe the soil, Joseph Elmer Yoakum created his works with ballpoint pen, colored pencil, pastel or watercolor.
Yoakum did not devote himself to his art until the age of 70. Of Native American origin, from the Cherokee Nation – as well as African and American, he referred to himself as an « Old Black Man » guided by God. He claimed to have visited all the continents his travels – except Antarctica – « as a tramp and a clan-fate passenger »: first as a child, engaged in a circus, then as a young soldier during the First World War (notably in France), and later, alone, by train, across the western United States, before settling in Chicago.
Today, his work is held in several public collections and is the subject of numerous prestigious individual and group exhibitions, notably at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, and the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Produced by Lemaire, in tribute to Joseph Elmer Yoakum – and echoing the pieces featured in the Lemaire Spring-Summer 2022 collection, Inscape is supported by Venus Over Manhattan Gallery, Anna Furney and Adam Lindemann.

Information:

Galerie Derouillon

38 rue Notre Dame de Nazareth

March 3rd to the 13th 2022

11h-18h