Camille Hilaire (1916-2004) Large Cubist Nude

Oil on canvas painting signed HILAIRE (Camille Hilaire 1916-2004) Important Post-Cubist figurative composition featuring a young naked woman in the artist's studio, animated by divisions with simple and precise geometric shapes multiplying the points of view , the whole is punctuated by a delicate arrangement of dazzling and luminous colors creating a constant feeling of calm and voluptuousness. Refined American box model frame. Dimensions: 100 cm X 81 cm / at sight: 92 cm X 73 cm Camille Hilaire was born in 1916 in Metz. Young he was then spotted by Jean Giono and Nicolas Untersteller, the future director of the Beaux-Arts in Paris, both welcomed Camille Hilaire in their studio in Metz, then he joined the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he was the student of Nicolas Untersteller and Maurice Brianchon. This academic success opens the doors of the various Parisian Salons to him. As his career progressed, he received strong recognition from his peers. Thus, in 1947, he became a professor of drawing and decorative compositions at the National School of Art in Nancy. In addition, in 1950, he took part in the Prix de Rome and won the 2nd second Grand Prix. In 1958, he was appointed professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In addition, the same year, he obtained the prize of the society of art lovers. In the second part of his career, he developed an appetite for watercolour, but especially for painting stained glass and tapestries. He will create many stained glass windows in some large churches in France, which will allow him to travel, Camille Hilaire was influenced by many small and large encounters. Thus, the great Italian masters of the Renaissance inspired his play of light in the majority of his paintings. Moreover, at the beginning of his career, he was confronted with the works of Albrecht Dürer, who influenced his fine and precise line. From 1964, he began to exhibit in France and then abroad, obtaining numerous prizes and devoting himself to different techniques such as large sets, mosaics, theater costumes, tapestry, watercolors and stained glass windows. . Raymond Charmet, painter and art critic, said of him: “Hilaire, a complete and thoughtful painter, deeply penetrates the masses with a radiant light, recomposing the rainbow in its intensity. He thus pursues the Cézanne effort to rediscover the architecture of matter which he suggests to us through a warm atmosphere, radiant with joy”. In Lorraine, you can see some of his works exhibited, notably at the Musée de la Cour d'Or in Metz and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy. About twenty churches in Lorraine are decorated with stained glass windows by Camille Hilaire, including four on our territory: the churches of Saint-Nicolas and Saint-Joseph in Yutz, the church of Saint-Maximin in Thionville and the church of Saint-Luc in Rochonvillers. Christiane Gérard wrote on this subject in the Trait d'Union, Yutz's journal: "But it is above all through the seductive luminosity of stained glass, through the lines of force and rhythms born of a well-thought-out cubism that Camille Hilaire expressed in many religious buildings in Lorraine, particularly in the churches of Saint-Nicolas and Saint-Joseph de Yutz, whose Baccarat crystal stained glass windows were entrusted to the Atelier Benoît in Nancy in 1958". Camille Hilaire is part of a certain tradition of academic painting, but by synthesizing the subject sometimes to the point of abstraction. He plays with shapes, light and colors with mastery, he has often accepted official commissions, such as the decor of the liners France and Liberté.