René Duvillier (1919-2002), Abstraction Entitled Pursuits, 1961

René Duvillier (1919-2002) Abstract composition entitled Poursuites Oil on canvas signed lower left Dimensions: 73 x 91 cm Bibliography René Duvillier (1919, Oyonnax - 2002, Paris) entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1935. After five years of captivity and an exhibition within the walls of the Krakow stalag, he began to make his mark in what was called the "New School of Paris". René Duvillier met the artists of the New School of Paris: he rubbed shoulders with Poliakoff and Hartung, but also painters of his generation, such as Jean Degottex and Jean Messagier with whom he exhibited at the gallery "À l'Étoile Scellée" directed by André Breton. Under the leadership of art critic Charles Estienne, it brought together painters from surrealism and gestural or lyrical abstraction, which ultimately triumphed in 1955. André Breton exhibited it and Benjamin Péret praised his pictorial work, where the movement of the brush animates natural elements "and gives them almost supernatural attributes" (1955). And if his gestures can touch Breton, in which he finds a form of surrealist automatism, his lyricism is much more turned towards Nature. International recognition, from the Guggenheim in New York (1953) to the Universal Exhibition in Montreal (1967), does not prevent him from being deeply moved. It is the sea in Brittany that causes him "a terrible shock" when he is invited in 1954 by Charles Estienne to this wild coast of North Finistère. "I found movement and gesture there. Everything was moving, the waves, the shore, the sky, the birds. I was especially struck by the spectacle of the Breton horses, their manes in the wind, springing from the foam. I also found the ancient Greek myth of the birth of the sea. " From then on, he never stopped offering, from the tiny movements of the waves and the air, a lesson in the universal. From the horses of the Argenton sea to the planets, from the gaze to the whirlpools, the world painted by René Duvillier connects the intimate to the universal and the human to the cosmos. He was the man of myth and vertigo, between paradoxes and successive shocks, a generous, rigorous and instinctive humanist at the same time. "I am emotional and passionate," said the painter. "I seek neither a simplification nor a synthesis; I lead myself head on, I must keep my totality." He confronted matter and his imagination was nourished by life. His dynamic and gestural painting combines the quasi-monochrome with the most vivid colors. His works are in the museums: Centre Pompidou Museum of Fine Arts of Nantes Museum of Fine Arts of Quimper Museum of Fine Arts of Brest Museum of Modern Art of Paris Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon