Pierre Montheillet (1923-2011) - Composition In Green And Yellow

Pierre Montheillet (1923-2011)
Composition in green and yellow
Mixed media on paper - monotype
Signed and dedicated “for my friends Sallaz” lower right
Dimensions of the work: 28.5 x 34.5 cm
Dimensions of the frame: 40 x 50 cm

Artist from Lyon, son and grandson of art dealers, Pierre Montheillet is initiated into painting on his own through contact with the canvases exhibited in the paternal gallery on rue Duguesclin. He discovered with great admiration the works of the painter Auguste Ravier (1814-1895) of which he became the appointed expert. He will occupy, for more than forty years, the front of the plastic arts scene in Lyon. Pierre Montheillet exhibited for the first time at the Salon d'Automne in 1939 before turning definitively towards a non-figurative painting at the end of the 1940s. This is a pictorial tendency which is distinguished from imitative art. but also abstraction and whose exhibition manifests “Twenty young painters of the French tradition” organized in 1941 by Jean Bazaine brings together artists such as Alfred Manessier and Charles Lapicque.

Defining himself above all as a landscape painter, Pierre Montheillet matured his plastic writing in contact with Hans Hartung, whom he met in 1948. He developed a very personal language and quickly became the Lyon master of abstract landscaping. He thus maintains a close relationship with the landscape without, however, worrying about any resemblance to the reality that is offered to him. Pierre Montheillet's works lose their figurative aspect while refuting the gratuitousness of the lyrical gesture specific to abstraction. Through a clever play of rhythms and colors, his works express the emotions felt in front of nature. He transcribes on the canvas the sensations that the outside world gives him, thus leaving a great freedom of reading to the spectator.

The work we offer is a monotype. It is an artistic technique which consists in directly affixing the pictorial material (ink, oil paint, gouache etc.) on a glass plate which will then be placed in the press so that the painted work is transferred to just one sheet of paper. The work thus obtained by this process is unique. Invented in Genoa (Italy) around 1648, many artists used this technique at the end of the 19th and the 20th centuries, in particular Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin (ill. 2). Our monotype is composed of yellow and green which mix spontaneously and which express the vivid emotions felt by the artist in front of nature.