At first glance, we are seized violently by the works of Stricher, as would powerful arms. This faculty seems to be that of a force with bright colors, from which emerges an obvious abstraction.

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Have we not already experienced such a sensation? While leafing through the pages of my visual memory, I stopped at Karel Appel, the Dutch co-founder of the COBRA group. He appropriated, without restraint, more than half a century ago the "automatic drawings" of the surrealists and flirted excessively with the unconscious. These canvases illustrate battlefields devastated by the aggressive force of colors.

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They could have guided Stricher on the path of spontaneous painting. However, it is certain that Van Gogh is also one of his models. In 1889, the latter wrote in a letter that he wanted to continue and develop "the insolent combination of bright colors and thus create paintings with simple subjects and garish colors". The future disciple Stricher highlights this “liberated color” which opened a breach and caused the hatching of Moderns, Fauves and Expressionists. For Stricher too, the revival of art from color means, as for Van Gogh already, "the revival in the perception of reality: the fundamental purpose of the Moderns".

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 Text : Manfred Schneckenburger