Bernard Gantner (1928-2018)

Bernard Gantner (1928-2018) Winter Landscape, 1979
Watercolor 47 x 55 cm
72 x 80 cm framed

Bernard Gantner (1928-2018) Born August 16, 1928 in Belfort, died June 1, 2018.


Painter of landscapes, snow, still lifes, gouache painter, watercolorist, engraver, illustrator. Bernard Gantner is an accomplished artist of international renown. Very young he showed an interest in the arts. Encouraged by the curator of the Belfort Museum, he decided at the age of ten to devote his life to painting. In 1961 he won the "Critics' Prize" awarded by his friend the famous writer and critic Claude Roger-Marx. BernardGantner then began the beginning of an international career. "Fifty solo exhibitions in Japan, sixty in the United States, about ten in Canada, exhibitions in England and in all the major cities of France. Retrospectives at the Château de Val, Abbaye de Baume-les-Dames, Musée Florival in Guebwiller, Mulhouse, Strasbourg, Vittel, Chicago, Basel, Tokyo. Numerous purchases by museums in France and abroad. "In 1998 he was awarded the Legion of Honor. He opened the Espace Gantner in Bourogne and made a donation of his lithographic work: more than 550 lithographs as well as etchings; he illustrated among others the tales of Maupassant, the poems of E. Verhaeren and published about ten bibliophile books often with the collaboration of Claude Roger-Marx. After living on the shores of Lake Geneva, Bernard Gantner returned to his native region where he devotes his time to his art, his museum and to the beautification of the surrounding gardens which he transforms and designs himself. He finds his inspiration in the landscapes around him, constantly chasing snow, water and vegetation in all their forms in all seasons, preferring the old snow-covered farms against a backdrop of fir trees in the Vosges and Haute-Savoie.