Pierre-eugène Clairin (1897-1980)

Pierre-Eugène CLAIRIN (1897-1980) Landscape Oil on canvas, signed lower right 81x81cm Pierre-Eugène Clairin born in Cambrai on March 14, 1897 and died in Thorigné-en-Charnie on July 7, 1980 is a French painter, illustrator, engraver and resistance fighter. Pierre-Eugène Clairin studied in England and entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the studio of Fernand Cormon in 1913. He joined the cavalry, then, in 1915, the Air Force. Having become a war pilot, he was decorated with the Croix de Guerre, the Military Medal and the Legion of Honor. In 1919, he entered the studio of Paul Sérusier at the Académie Ranson. He met Maurice Denis and Édouard Vuillard, who introduced him to engraving and lithography. As a child, he spent the summer in Brittany with the family of his uncle Georges Clairin, and at the 1921 Salon d'Automne, he presented Breton landscapes and exhibited his paintings of Pont-Aven at the Druet Gallery, where he met Pierre Farrey. In 1927, he signed a contract with the Bernheim Gallery, which exhibited his work in New York. In 1929, he won the Abd-el-Tif Prize. He spent two years at the Villa Abd-el-Tif, which he extended until 1934 with trips to Morocco and southern Algeria. He returned to Algeria regularly after 1945. Upon his return in 1934, he settled in Saint-Loup-de-Naud and, for the 1937 World's Fair, he decorated the pavilions of Île-de-France and the Vatican State (which earned him a gold medal) as well as the National Conservatory of Music. Mobilized in 1939, then demobilized in 1940, he organized a network of resistance fighters in Saint-Loup-de-Naud. In 1946, he went on a mission and gave lectures in the United States and worked in particular for and with Albert Camus, whom he had met in 1929 in Algiers, through Edmond Charlot, at the bookstore-gallery "Les Vraies Richesses". He notably published a series of plates on the works of Camus (Noces, L'Exil et le Royaume, La Femme adulteère) and Henry de Montherlant with Rombaldi in 1950. He received the Grand Prix de l'Île-de-France in 1957. From 1960, he painted in particular in Île-de-France and in the Pont-Aven region. He was elected member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1967 (Section IV: Engraving) and president of the Société des Peintres-Graveurs Français in 1970. He died on his return from one of his last exhibitions in Pont-Aven, in July 1980. Paul Sérusier wrote to Clairin, whom he considered his spiritual successor: "I would like to find in you the heir to a tradition that my masters bequeathed to me, and to which I believe I have added something, even if it is only a little order. » Pierre-Eugène Clairin was one of the last painters to have worked in Paul Gauguin's studio in Lezaven Pont-Aven.