Gérard Desgranges (1919-2006): The Channel At Low Tide

Gérard DESGRANGES (1919-2006) The channel at low tide Oil on canvas Painting dimensions: 73 x 92 cm Signed lower left. Painting in perfect condition. Unframed. Provenance: Artist's family Painting sold with invoice and certificate of authenticity. Possibility of shipping. Gérard DESGRANGES was born in Coutances, in the Manche (50), on February 24, 1919. Died in 2006. This origin perhaps explains his renewed attachment to rain-laden skies, boats rocking with the tide, and trees bent in the wind. 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 École des Beaux Arts in Paris, after being accepted first in the Decorative Arts competition. He also worked extensively in studios and received advice from Yves BRAYER. Leading a parallel career as a teacher, 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. Naturally placing himself in the movement of the School of Paris, he belongs to the "poetic reality" movement ("he certainly transposes nature but he nevertheless remains attached to it. His still lifes and landscapes [...], allowing him to give free rein to his love of nature and his fantasy. His fish and his beaches are boldly transposed and treated with small, lively, nervous, intelligent touches"). He loves nature and what it offers us: tormented skies, abers, ports, fishmongers, wild flowers. But also the Seasons that pass and return with constantly renewed emotions. But make no mistake, Gérard DESGRANGES is not a painter of nature. He draws inspiration from it, transposes it, seeks to recreate it, to inscribe it in his world. Figurative? He probably is, but remains autonomous in relation to his subject. He knows how to choose the original angle, seeks the intimate vibration, the hidden meaning of things. Painter of correspondences? If drawing remains an essential framework, it only appears in filigree. It is the painter's profession that always prevails. But the touch adapts to what he wants to construct. Gérard DESGRANGES seeks to construct a coherent spectacle: 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 cannot abandon a canvas until it is definitively finished. [...] The strictest glazes play with the bold touches according to perfectly defined intentions, which it would be futile to imagine as different". Each part 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 says, "in painting, the contrast of materials plays as much as the contrast of colors", the painter must take advantage of "all the differences that the material offers and then the color takes on a much deeper meaning". In DESGRANGES, color has a dynamic and aesthetic value. He seeks the harmony of colors. The grays of the beginning have given way to an increasingly colorful and luminous palette. How can his work be characterized? Compose and transpose. to bring, through intelligence and sensitivity, the amateur to desire: cups of red fruits, forest mushrooms, trout caught on flies, and flowers. And then seascapes, especially at low tide. All without nostalgia. Gérard DESGRANGES is an artist who does not limit himself to canvases (of all formats, by the way). He has painted many watercolors and made many ink drawings. Xavier RISSELET His awards: Grand Prix des Jeunes de la Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1956 Winner of the Othon-Friesz Prize, 1956 Aix en Provence Prize, 1958 Hidden Signature Drawing Prize (Marianne Gilbert), 1959 Port-Autonome du Havre Prize, 1963 Barbizon Prize, 1964 Bernard Esdras-Gosse Prize, Paris School, Galerie Charpentier, 1965 Gold Medal at the Salon des Artistes Français, 1974