Roger Chastel, 1987-1981, The Two Women In The Garden,

Roger Chastel, the two women in the garden, oil on canvas, size 33cm by 41cm, studio sale stamp on the back.
The painter Roger Chastel was born in Paris in 1897. Giving up his secondary studies, he enrolled in the drawing class at the Académie Julian in 1912, where he became friends with the painter Jean Subervie. He passed his entrance exam for the École des Beaux-Arts and attended Fernand Cormon's studio, which he quickly left, however. He returned to the Académie Julian in the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens.
Called to fight during the First World War, Roger Chastel was demobilized in 1919 and enrolled at the Académie Ranson in Montparnasse, then followed the Argentinian painter Araujo when the latter founded his own academy on rue Bréa. Roger Chastel participated in group exhibitions, starting in 1923 at the Salon d'Automne, then at the Salon des Tuileries. He was then part of the large group of the Ecole de Paris whose work was on the edge of non-figuration. Continuing to exhibit in the Parisian Salons, Roger Chastel settled permanently in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1928. Chastel missed the Cubism revolution, but nevertheless the influence of Picasso was evident in his work, as was that of Bonnard and Matisse. Chastel and Bonnard became friends, the artist lived in Cannes during the Nazi occupation. Bonnard introduced Chastel to the Galerie Maeght. In 1938, the artist was chosen by France to paint one of the four panels for the United Nations. He won several prestigious awards (Grand Prix de Peinture at the first Sao Paulo Biennale in 1951, National Prize for the Arts in 1961). From 1963 to 1968, he was head of the studio at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. He died in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1981. cf galerie mc