, law and philosophy and read extensively, developing a foundation for his future highly spiritual art work. In 1942, he started teaching at the lycee in Douai and during his spare time painted a London landscape, his first painting. Mathieu later read a book by English author Edward Crankshaw that inspired him “to treat art as a method of expression.” In 1944, the artist produced his first batch of “non-figuration” works and three years later held his first public solo exhibition. These broke with the geometric abstractions of Kasimir Malevich and Mondrian, creating outstanding lyrical abstraction works, with Mathieu being praised by the French Minister of Culture at the time Andre Malraux as “a Western calligrapher.” After World War II, the artist went to the US, where the highly spiritual intellectual inquiry and learned background of his artistic vision enabled his art to stand out from the abstract expressionist paintings of such older abstract masters as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. At the same time, he also painted in public before the action art of maverick French action painter Yves Klein, transforming the creative process into something akin to painting consciousness challenging the canvas.