The Gare Du Nord Oil On Canvas René Galant (1914-1997)

Painting depicting the Gare du Nord painted in the characteristic style of René Galant, its author. A painter who was a witness to his time, refusing to give in to the fashion for abstraction for abstraction's sake. Slight cracking of the painting should be noted. René Galant painted the French as they were – mediocre for the most part – and not as they should be. A witness to his time, Galant was not an allegorist. He did not paint to please. Called by Kischka, he naturally joined the Group of Painters Witnesses of their Time, where Georges Besson discovered this "visual chronicler" in this Salon, a great mass of figuration and naturalism which in the 1950s and 1960s stood up to the surge of abstraction. He took his place alongside his peers, alongside painters who, like Jansem, were hungry for beautiful materials and rare combinations. Galant is as far from the ordinary in his harmonies as he is from vulgarity in his distortions. He exhibited alongside Minaux and Lorjou, two members of the Homme Témoin group, created in 1949 to defend figuration. He goes into a learned kitchen of blacks, grays and pinks to depict with a warmth that does not exclude the ferocity of everyday French people, those we meet in the street: turfists, salad sellers, mushroom sellers, housewives, gamblers, ladies of easy virtue, working women, peasants, mine workers, inhabitants of bistros and café terraces, as well as loufiats, sailors, girls, old people, businesses, chess players, inveterate drinkers and pétanque players. With his intransigence of the living and the real, he does it with truculence and forces us, even though we deny ourselves, to recognize ourselves in them. This primary aspect of daily life is ours, our terrain, our traditions, our habits, and our flaws. To express this, his powerfully shaped characters are treated with broad strokes, carved with a billhook. There are paintings that speak to us, others that say nothing to us – see the gratuitous experiments of certain abstract artists. On the other hand, there are paintings that take our breath away for days, the works of Galant are among them. A reader of Dostoyevsky, Balzac, and Marcel Aymé, Galant restores their climate. Galant will, over time, take his place on the walls of major museums, as a bard of courtyards, streets, and ordinary people. René Galant was born in 1914 in Chalagnac in the Dordogne. He died in Montparnasse in 1997. Source: auction catalog for the Millon et associés sale of Wednesday, October 10, 2007