Georges Dayez: Abstraction, The City, St Paul De Vence, 1962

Jazzy, swinging, pulsating, modern: here is a beautiful cubist and abstract hommage to urban life in the early 1960s. 

It is a work by French artist Georges Dayez (1907-1991), an artist of the New School of Paris whose works have regularly been exhibited with those of non-figurative painters. Dayez' career took of after WW2, in which he had fought. After the Liberation, he 
exhibited at the Salon d'Automne alongside young painters of French tradition such as Picasso , Matisse , Léger , Bonnard and Braque, while the Galerie de France bought paintings from him. He was also one of the five young painters that the Galerie Denise René - the first Parisian gallery of the avant gardes -  showed in 1945 in its inaugural exhibition, alongside Max Ernst and Picabia.

During the 1950s, he exhibited at the Musée de Grenoble and Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco as well as in Munich. Dayez had numerous solo shows of his work during the 1950s and 1960s. The cities were he exhibited include; New York, Lausanne, Nancy, Oslo, Amsterdam, Lyon, Avignon, Milan and Madrid, among others.

Works by Dayez are now in an impressively large number of institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, the French National Library, the French regional Museums of Beaux de Provence, Dieppe, Le Havre, Nancy and Vichy; the Museum of Fine Art of Baltimore, the Fogg Museum of Art, the New York Public Libarary and the Princeton Art Museum in the US, as well as in Museums in Spain, Italy, Israel, Switzerland and Japan. 

Our vibrant cityscape by Dayez actually depicts the tiny French medieval hillside town of Saint Paul de Vence. Saint Paul de Vence is not any old medieval town: pulsating with life, it is well known for its modern and contemporary art museums and galleries such as the Maeght Foundation. Home of Jacques Raverat, Gwen Raverat and Marc Chagall, during the 1960s, the town was frequented by French actors Yves Montand, Simone Signoret and Lino Ventura, and poet Jacques Prévert.

A mixed media/pastel and coloured pencil drawing, the work is situated at the lower left, signed and situated at the lower right. Measuring 29 x 41 cm  at sight, the overall size in a quality frame is 47 x 60 cm.