Are you willing to accept the idea that a woman named Pierrette Bloch, until her death in 2018, was the greatest living artist anywhere? In all likelihood, you have never even heard of her. Still, in the era of “blue chip” artists, Bloch—whose work has been shown in discerning galleries and museums yet has never reached the stratosphere financially—was not only supreme among female artists but was the best of the best. Her arrangements of dots and lines on canvas, her weavings made of the finest filament, mesmerize us with their quiet bravura. To behold them is like entering a Zen rock garden; every small form and the intervening spaces, while seeming as casual as children’s art, is placed with authority and a unique flair for visual harmonics. Bloch came from a Swiss family and spent most of her life in Paris. Her aunt and uncle were the first clients of Édouard Jeanneret, the future Le Corbusier, which prompted him to tell his parents that Jews had more culture and courage than did Protestants like them. Now a major retrospective, long overdue, is opening in St. Étienne. Take it on faith: an outing to this relatively remote location to see the work of an obscure artist will knock your socks off. —Nicholas Fox Weber