. … The act of painting for him is equivalent to a religious cult, and it is in meditation that his pictorial visions are born. Biblical subjects that predominated in his early figurative paintings come alive again in today’s abstract compositions, freed from traditional iconographic dogmas their mystical sense diffuses into the subtle reflections of light, into the strange radiance of colors.

In moving from the figurative to the non-figurative, Fichet has not at all abandoned the idea of a particular theme which would be expressed in each worthwhile piece, and his work consist in the slow and conscious elaboration of these themes. He starts from spontaneous drawings that he transposes on canvas as a simple starting point, he prefers large formats which present less important constraints to the full development of all his means of expression. Fichet always surrounds himself with several paintings in the process, maintaining constant dialogue with them and waiting for the moment that dictates the continuation of their execution. It is during work that the image is formed, more specified at each step.

The compositions are based on geometrizable plans that Fichet impregnates with paste and colors to make resonant building stones. He groups them, confronts them, amalgamates them or disperses them in a cautious play. Sometimes the plans part and open vistas on the nothingness, they link together to frame a specific fragment of the universe. Some associations arise, suggesting constellations, meteors whose appearance has never anything set. We notice a latent mutation in its many forms, a discreet movement of ascent and fall in the vertical formats, a struggle of antinomic forces in the wide formats, a struggle which often ends with the victory of clearnesses emerging from the darkness.

Fichet continues on his way towards an increasing release of all the rigid structures, towards a refinement in the shade values that ultimately, decide on his painting resonance. More and more, the outlines fade and clear colors give way to delicate hues. A sharp sensitivity is at the service of a technical mastery that drives him to weigh the slightest dosages without leaving anything to chance.

By overlaying the thinner layers on top of each other, he gets remarkable transparency effects and thus creating an indistinct spatial atmosphere where all suggested connections extend to infinity. In the midst of the warm and luminous color range, the white plays a decisive part, strange factor of the unreal, likely to enchant the matter it turns into magical veils concealing the abysses and protecting open wounds.

If Fichet himself refers to these whitenesses as linen and thinks of the holy face cloth, we recognize in them reflections of the spiritual world from which the sources of Fichet’s art spring.
     

Herta Wescher (Extraits Cimaise 1957)