Jane Aubert

Bernard Lorjou was born on September 9, 1908, in Blois, France, a somber village of picturesque houses on the Loire River, 32 miles from Tours. He was the youngest of 3 children and a born painter, indulging in all the childish pranks to obtain crayons and suitable materials to satisfy his strong desire to draw and paint. In 1924, he headed to Paris, where he lived in extreme poverty in a small room on the Rue Raspail. Eventually, his funds ran out, so he started sleeping in the Orsay train station. Within a year, he found work with the silk house Ducharne. He used his income at Ducharne to finance his formal studies at the evening school in Paris. He was taught a kind of 19th-century realism, dark and painstaking. His canvases show brilliant brushwork, filled with an emotional intensity that was to typify countless canvases. At Ducharne, he designed patterns for prints that became sought by fashion houses ranging from Jacques Fath, Balmain, Lanvin and Christian Dior and worn by many notable women of the period, including Marlene Dietrich, Dolores del Rio, Jane Aubert and the Duchess of Windsor. At Ducharne, Lorjou met his wife Yvonne Mottet, also an artist. Mottet taught Lorjou conventional drawing and her influence on his work and life was profound. Her kind, gentle but direct force humanized and appeased his volcanic personality. In 1934, Lorjou and Mottet set up an art studio in Montmartre, Paris. This same studio was featured in the 1996 movie, Everyone Says I Love You. In 1939, Lorjou returned to Blois as German troops began invading France. During his short time as mayor, he recalled housing, treating, burying and feeding many of the town’s citizens. In 1942, he displayed works for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants. Three years later in 1945, Lorjou held his first solo exhibition in Paris at the Galerie du Bac. Less than a year later, the Galerie du Bac held an exhibition dedicated to the emerging style of Expressionist artists from different countries, featuring artists such as Soutine, Rouault, Goerg, Ensor, Beckmann and Lorjou. In 1948, Lorjou was named co-recipient of the coveted Prix de la Critique award with Bernard Buffet. That same year, Lorjou formed the artistic group L’Homme Témoin with the art critic Jean Bouret to defend figurative painting. The group originally comprised 5 members and shortly thereafter expanded to include other artists, including Bernard Buffet, Jean Couty, Minaux and Simone Dat. In 1950, Lorjou painted and exhibited a series of large-format paintings inspired by current events, namely, L'Age Atomique. Today it is owned by the French Government and held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Over the next 10 years, Lorjou painted a series of widely acclaimed works now held by major museums worldwide. In 1963, Lorjou rented a barge named La Touraine to navigate up and down the Seine River in Paris for three days. There were several politically-charged monumental paintings on display, including La Mort de John XXIII, Grimau’s Blood and July 14th. Local authorities eventually stopped the barge. In 1965, Lorjou created woodblocks from his illustrations Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d'Orphée by Guillaume Apollinaire, which was published by Editions d’Auteuil and printed by Robert Blanchet in an edition of 230 copies. In 1968, his wife and companion of 40 years, Yvonne Mottet, passed away from leukemia. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Lorjou created iconic works and exhibited them throughout the globe. These included acclaimed exhibitions, such as “The Sharon Tate Assassination," “Bullfights” and “Lorjou in Private French Collections.” In 1985, The Palais de l'Europe organized a retrospective on Lorjou. The same year, Lorjou organized his last exhibit in Paris with a series of tarps around the theme of AIDS. On January 26, 1986, the last day of his AIDS exhibit, Lorjou died of an asthma attack. Posthumous exhibits were held in Venezuela and Japan.

Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

Find fine art prints for sale on 1stDibs today.