1963-1972 | Surrealist Period

« The gouaches and paintings of Max Wechsler are imbued with a curiosity directed toward the inner essence of things, a quality that Bachelard described as the "dreams of the intimacy of matter." Initially, he engaged in a contemplative inventory of rare figure-objects, which culminated in a first phase of large canvases. In these works, static juxtapositions and accumulations revealed a kind of obsessive vertigo. It was a time of rest and introspection.

Gradually, his inner gardens stirred into a slow expansion—germinations, coils, unfoldings, growths, swellings, and fissures began to indicate that this crowded world was starting to crack, as if an experience too long internalized sought to burst its confines. A progressively insistent call now carves a path through this organic unfolding; a surge courses through the whole, and life begins to erupt outward. »

— Pierre Gaudibert, ARC Catalogue