Gérard Desgranges (1919-2006): Gathering

Gérard DESGRANGES (1919-2006) Ceps Oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm Signed lower left Painting in perfect condition. Unframed Provenance: Artist's family Painting sold with invoice and certificate of authenticity. Fast and neat shipment with insurance. Gérard DESGRANGES was born in Coutances, in Manche (50), on February 24, 1919. Died in 2006. This origin perhaps explains his renewed attachment to skies laden with rain, to boats which pitch with the tide, and to bent trees downwind. In his family, art was an integral part of life (his father Guillaume-Jacques François DESGRANGES (1886-1967) was a renowned lithographer). Gérard DESGRANGES enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Paris, after being awarded first place in the Decorative Arts competition. He also worked a lot in workshops and received advice from Yves BRAYER. At the same time leading a teaching career, he exhibited - with the greatest of his time - in many prestigious galleries: the Epona, Charpentier and Katia Granoff galleries in Paris; the Hamon Gallery in Le Havre. Being naturally in the movement of the School of Paris, he belongs to the movement of "poetic reality" ("he certainly transposes nature but he nevertheless remains attached to it. His still lifes and his landscapes [...], allowing him to give free rein to his love of nature and his fantasy. His fishes and his strikes are boldly transposed and treated with small lively, nervous, intelligent touches"). He loves nature and what it offers us: stormy skies, abers, ports, fishmongers, wildflowers. But also the Seasons that pass and return with constantly renewed emotions. But make no mistake about it, Gérard DESGRANGES is not a painter of nature. He draws inspiration from it, transposes it, seeks to recreate it, to include it in his world. Figurative? It is, no doubt, but remains autonomous in relation to its subject. He knows how to choose the original angle, seeks the intimate vibration, the hidden meaning of things. Painter of correspondences? If the drawing remains an essential framework, it only appears as a watermark. It is the profession of painter that always prevails. But the key adapts to what he wants to build. Gérard DESGRANGES seeks to build a coherent show: no element of the painting is indifferent to the general drama. As has been said, "he weighs with the certainty of an analyst and a philosopher the 'beauty-matter' relationships and can only abandon a canvas upon final completion. [...] Glacis the strictest play with the fat keys according to perfectly defined intentions, and which it would be vain to imagine different". Each parcel of the canvas is worked in a subtle way. There is often "matter" which gives great vigor to the painted subject. As Nicolas de Staël said, "in painting, the contrast of materials plays as much as the contrast of colors", the painter having to take advantage of "all the differences offered by the material and then the color takes on a much deeper meaning". At DESGRANGES, color has a dynamic and aesthetic value. He seeks the harmony of colors. The grays of the beginning gave way to an increasingly colorful and luminous palette. How to characterize his work? Compose and transpose. bring, by intelligence and sensitivity, the amateur to the desire: cuts of red fruits, forest mushrooms, trout caught on the fly, and flowers. And then seascapes, especially at low tide. All without nostalgia. Gérard DESGRANGES is an artist who does not limit himself to canvases (in all formats, by the way). He painted many watercolors and made many ink drawings. Xavier RISSELET His awards: National Fine Arts Youth Grand Prize, 1956 Winner of the Othon-Friesz Prize, 1956 Aix en Provence Prize, 1958 Hidden Signature Drawing Prize (Marianne Gilbert), 1959 Port Prize -Autonome du Havre, 1963 Barbizon Prize, 1964 Bernard Esdras-Gosse Prize School of Paris, Charpentier Gallery, 1965 Gold medal at the Salon of French Artists, 1974