Alfred Courmes (1898 - 1993) -paris, Canal View- Dated 1928.

Technique Mixte. Drawing, watercolor, gouache.
Dimensions of the work: 17.5 x 11.5, with the frame 37.5 x 32.5 cm

This urban and industrial design is fine and neat. It is probably the Saint Martin canal. We can see several moored boats and a crane in the foreground overlooking the Parisian buildings. The artist colored part of his drawing revealing a piece of blue sky, two brown doors and a two-tone building facade thus bringing a poetic touch to his work

After his secondary studies in Monaco, his father, a naval officer encourages in his desire to be a painter. He went to Paris in 1925, became a pupil of Roger de La Fresnaye and exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'automne where he exhibited Cubist canvases and portraits. The following year, He moved to Ostend where he was inspired by his contemporaries Ensor, Permeke, Labisse while soaking up old Flemish and Dutch painting, Van Eyck, Hans Holbein, Dürer, Brueghel discovery by visiting the museums of Bruges and Ghent. His paintings became both surreal, classic and expressionist Often diverting mythological themes from his paintings and borrowing from advertising imagery of his time for humorous purposes. He was nicknamed the Angel of bad taste by his detractors. But his provocations brought him to notoriety In 1930, he moved to Paris and in 1936 received the Paul Guillaume prize (shared with Tal-Coat) for Saint Sébastien He obtained an order in 1937, Le Toucher for the pavilion of the Sèvres factory at the International Exhibition in Paris. In 1938, Albert Sarraut, Minister of National Education, offered him the wall decoration of the dining room of the French Embassy in Ottawa in Canada. In 1946, he participated in the Surrealist exhibition in Lille with Magritte. He exhibited at the Salon de Mai Reconnu as the forerunner of a generation of young painters at the exhibition "Twelve years of Contemporary Art" at the Galerie Nationale du Grand Palais in 1972 He takes part in the exhibition "Mythologies Everyday" at the Museum of Modern Art in the city of Paris, as well as that "The Realisms between revolution and reaction 1919-1939" at the Center Georges-Pompidou. He was named Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1991. Alfred Courmes, "the unclassifiable" put his solid culture and classic technique at the service of an art imbued with stripping humor and great poetry. He followed his path without ever giving in to ease. The value of this endearing and singular artist is today recognized in art circles. Main exhibitions: 1965: São Paulo Biennale, Brazil 1977: Retrospective, Galerie Jean Briance, Paris 1979:

Retrospective, Musée de Grenoble6 1984: Writing in painting, CNAC, Nice 1989: Retrospective, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Poitiers 1989: Retrospective, Saint-Roch museum in Issoudun 1989: Retrospective, Fine Arts museum of Roubaix 1989: Retrospective, Center Georges-Pompidou, Paris 1998: Realists of the 1920s, Musée-Galerie de la Seita, Paris Bibliography: -Gilles Bernard and V. Andriveau, Alfred Courmes, Paris, Le Cherche midi, 2003, 183 p

Museums: Paris, Center Georges-Pompidou Musée de Bormes-Les-Mimosas, Alger, Beauvais, Blérancourt, Boulogne-Billancourt, Grenoble, Issoudun, Poitiers and Roubaix . the curator of the New York Museum of Modern Art acquires the San Sebastian at the lock on a personal basis.