Marius De Buzon Algeria

Village of Kabylie by Frederic Marius de Buzon (1879-1958) painted on cardboard measuring 34.8x25 cm. The painting bears a Bordeaux framer's label on the back. A member of the Algiers school and of Spanish descent—and a descendant of the painter Francisco de Goya—he is the first cousin of the Bordeaux painter and decorator Camille de Buzon. Marius de Buzon was a student of Paul Quinsac at the Bordeaux School of Fine Arts, then he was admitted to the École nationale des beaux-arts in Paris in the studios of Fernand Cormon and Albert Maignan. He received a medal at the Salon des artistes français in 1911. He also exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries, the Salon d'automne and the Galerie Charlet in Algiers. He won the Abd-el-Tif Prize in 1913. He is considered one of the most influential members of the Algiers School. Mobilized in 1914 in Macedonia, then in 1915 in Kabylie where he spent a period of fifteen months in the region of Michelet (today Ain el Hammam) and Fort-National (Larbaâ Nath Irathen), which he traveled on foot or on mule. He was awarded the gold medal out of competition at the Salon des artistes français in 1922 (for Le Marché kabyle and Le Retour du marché, of which he painted several replicas between 1922 and 1926), and the silver-gilt medal of the Société des peintres orientalistes français in 1922. He won the Rosa Bonheur prize in 1923 for his Portrait d'enfant and the grand artistic prize of Algeria the same year. The Salon of the Society of Algerian and Orientalist Artists awarded him the PLM Railway Company travel grant in 1926 and the Algerian State Railways travel grant in 1930. He taught at the Algiers Academy of Arts founded by Rafel Tona and André Figueras in the 1930s. He also exhibited at the Decorative Arts Exhibition in 1925 The Port of Bordeaux and Overseas Relations (panel 8.10 × 3.14 m) commissioned by the French State, at the Carnot Palace in Algiers in December 1925, at the Salon of the Society of Orientalist Painters in 1922-1923-1933-1934-1935, in Roubaix in October 1928, at the Dujardin Gallery in Prague in 1930 Terraces in Ghardaia and Fête de Eid Seghir, at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition Moorish Baths in Ghardaia, at the Second International Colonial Art Exhibition in Naples, from October 1934 to January 1935 The Kabyle Butcher, and at the 1937 Universal Exhibition in Paris. He was appointed president of the patronage committee of the Villa Abd-el-Tif. He is considered, and cited, as the "singer of Kabylia" and one of the founders of the School of Algiers (following Maxime Noiré, and with Léon Carré, Léon Cauvy, Paul Jouve). He also painted landscapes and types of the Bougie region, the Mzab (where he was one of the first painters to enter, after Étienne Dinet, with Maurice Bouviolle), Touggourt where he stayed regularly after 1945 (L'Heure blonde, 81 × 120, 1950), Témacine (1953), as well as in Sidi Bou Saïd, or in Spain and Morocco, in Casablanca, Rabat or even Fez. His works are highly sought after by collectors as representing scenes of Kabyle life, landscapes, pastoral scenes; "he substitutes for the notion of ethnic identification, the infinitely more poetic one of allegory (Élisabeth Cazenave)", while in 1930 Pierre Angel wrote of him: "Marius de Buzon pursued on these African shores the ancient dreams of pagan mysticism". Marius de Buzon died on November 26, 1958 in Algiers. His son Jean and his grandson Jean-Frédéric de Buzon were murdered in 1962 while trying to move and save their father's workshop.