Henri Lachieze-rey (caluire, 1927 - Lyon, 1974), Countryside Near Saint-tropez (1960)

Henri Lachièze-Rey studied first at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His painting is in line with impressionism and demonstrates great sensitivity in the suggestion of diffused light. He also works with impasto and distortion, but without resorting to the violence of expressionism. He exhibited in Lyon, Cannes and Paris, and became a member of the Salon d'Automne. He also exhibited at the Salon des Peintres Témoins de notre Temps and at the Menton Biennale on several occasions where he received a prize in 1959. A retrospective of his work was organized in 2003 at the Paul Dini museum in Villefranche-sur-Saône. He is the son of the philosopher and Professor Pierre Lachièze-Rey and his mother comes from a family of industrialists from Lyon. At first, his friends claimed that his parents were not very happy that their son was planning a career as a painter and that this changed when they realized that he was considered a valuable artist. From 1946 to 1950, he was first a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon then continued his studies until 1952 at the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1949, he won the Paris prize, then in 1954-55, thanks to the prize from the Mediterranean Union of Modern Arts, he stayed at the Villa Zoé in Nice with his friend Georges Adilon. In 1957, he married the ceramist Jeanne Charpe. He then lived in Saint-Tropez, then in Tuscany in 1959. Back in France, from 1961 to 1974, he settled in Saint-Romain-du-Mont d'Or and worked with Adilon and his Sanzist friends, the painters Cottavoz, Fusaro, and Truphémus. His first personal exhibition took place in 1956 at the Douvaine town hall. Then his works were presented in Paris at the Cartier gallery and, in Lausanne, in 1965, 1970 and 1972 at the Entracte gallery. Other exhibitions will take place in Lyon in the Saint-Georges and Bellecour galleries and also in Annecy, Cannes, Toulouse and in New York, at the Franck Partidge gallery, specialized in figurative French painting of this period. Sadly, this brilliant career was brutally ended. Henri Lachièze-Rey died accidentally, run over by a car in Lyon, on July 14, 1974. Since then, he has occupied a particular position between martyr and mystery, without however escaping this strange disaffection surrounding Lyon, unfairly the entire Sanzist group. Many of the painter's works are in private collections. Some, however, are present in the United States in a Fine Arts museum in Nice, at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse as well as at the Paul Dini museum in Villefranche-sur-Saône.

=> Henri Lachièze-Rey, Countryside near Saint-Tropez (Var), 1960, oil on canvas, 60 cm x 92 cm, signed and dated lower right and titled on the back on a label.
=> Provenance: Galerie 65, Cannes (label on the back). Beautiful modern frame made from an American oak box. Cleaned and refinished in 2023. Part of the retrospective dedicated to the painter at the Paul Dini Museum. Listed in the archives for the preparation of the Catalog Raisonné.