Lionel Floch "the Seaweed Harvesters" Brittany

Lionel Floch, born on May 9, 1895 in Quimper and died in the same city on December 7, 1972, is a French painter, engraver and designer. Son of a naval officer, he completed his secondary studies at the Lycée de La Tour d'Auvergne in Quimper. Mobilized during the First World War, he then learned painting with Théophile Deyrolle in Concarneau and was also influenced by Lucien Simon, part of the Bande Noire. He began exhibiting in the early 1920s, first in Brittany, in Brest and Quimper, then participated in the Salon d'Automne. From 1923 to 1948, he worked to earn his living as a tax collector in Pont-Croix (Finistère). In Pont-Croix, he became friends with the painters who frequented Cap Sizun, such as Paul de Lassence, Gale Turnbull and Abel-G. Warshawsky. In 1934, he co-founded the Union artistique quimpéroise, which brought together the intellectual and artistic community of Quimper. Floch maintained a correspondence with Max Jacob, who regularly exhibited at the Salon des peintres de la Bretagne. Through the Union, he also became friends with Jean Moulin (then sub-prefect of Châteaulin and himself an engraver), the Italian ceramist Giovanni Léonardi and Doctor Augustin Tuset. It was in the company of the latter that he visited North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula: these trips would inspire several works by Lionel Floch.