Guy Benoist

Tour de France, The Cyclists

1983

Mid-century lyrical surrealist abstract watercolour on paper by French artist Jean Clerté, signed and dated bottom right. Presented in mid-century frame. Jean Clerté , born in 1930 in Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe in Vienne, is a French painter, engraver, draftsman, watercolourist and sculptor . This work is a great example of his more humorous and expressive work influenced by Alechinsky from the late 1960s onwards. There is a light playfulness and yet the watercolours are more vivid than his previous palette. Jean Clerté works in series. His sequential narrations testify both to a youthful spontaneity and to a perfect mastery in the distribution of forms and images on the painted surface. The narration is not only an accumulation of juxtaposed fragments and symbols, it forms a whole, it takes on and gives meaning. In general, we can say of Clerté that he practices an “eco-art” that feeds on primary hungers: the feeling of being united with nature, the vegetable, the mineral, the aquatic. In his colourful canvases, his inks, his boxes, his objects, like a shaman on the path of his dreams, the painter Clerté mounts an assault on beasts and demons, elves and gnomes. From the Poitevin marshes to the tropical forests emerges a fauna caught in the meanders of a design that marvels at the appearance of these grotesque idols. Jean Clerté began to draw and paint at a very young age, and at the age of 15 he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Poitiers. Then in 1949, curious about the capital, he moved to Paris. Having very few financial resources, he could not continue his studies at first, worked as a model to survive, and met other artists; he was then admitted to the studio of Ossip Zadkine and, from 1952, he was also able to study engraving at Atelier 17 of Stanley William Hayter, an English engraver and printer living in Paris associated in the 1930s with surrealism. At the end of the 1960s, he worked alongside Pierre Alechinsky, founding member of the Cobra movement, engraving Alechinsky's originals, benefiting from his advice, and discovering acrylic as a medium. From 1976, Jean Clerté became associate professor at Hayter. Clerté had taught previously, in 1971 at the Salzburg Summer University and in 1972 he gave courses at the Paris-Sorbonne University . In 1981, he was appointed professor at the School of Decorative Arts , where he had Maïlys Seydoux-Dumas as a student and, from 1983 to 1988, he was Alechinsky's assistant professor at the Paris School of Fine Arts. His first works are part of the current of lyrical abstraction, and are nourished by impressions of nature (landscape motifs, e.g. forest fires, waterscapes), then around 1968, encouraged by Alechinsky, he rejects abstraction, and his work becomes more figurative with expressive and humorous elements. From this period his colours are more subdued, often with pastel tones, he works on series. Jean Clerté has created a world in a space where drawing, painting, objects participate in a playful figuration. From his drawings were born sculptures and sometimes mobiles (Le Moulin à dessin). If it is the artist who makes astonishing, polychrome, whimsical “toys”, it is the painter who appeals to adults through his caustic and satirical humour. His first exhibitions in France took place at the Galerie Massol , then at the Galerie Pascal...

Abstract expressionist CoBrA style chalk on paper of a human figure attributed to French artist, A Nuchy. The work is unsigned but was acquired along with ...

A late 20th century watercolour and gouache on paper by British artist Derek Carruthers. Signed to the bottom right. Carruthers at one period in his painting became quite interested...

Late Art Deco Period, Cubist watercolour of a nautical harbour scene painted by Yan Bernard Morel (dit Yan Bernard Dyl ) in 1939. Yan B. Morel, born on June 18th 1887, was a French painter, landscape designer, decorator, illustrator and film maker. Morel was a friend of Robert Delauney...

A large and colourful French mid-century painting of fishermen repairing their nets by Jean-Frédéric Canepa. The painting is signed bottom right and presented in a fine gilded wood f...

French, Mid Century, pastel and crayon portrait of an elegant young lady by Gourdon. Signed and dated bottom left. Trade label to the back board. Presented in period deep 'tray' frame. This seems to be an early work by the artist and hence it carries his name rather than his later more distinctive signature 'Aslan'. Alain Gordon was one of two brothers, his sibling Michel also went on to achieve notable success with his distinctive 'comic' style. Alain Gourdon...

Provenance: This piece was deaccessioned from the Bass museum in Miami Beach florida. This piece is a good museum example of Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver (from the original French term cadavre exquis), A method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. This example is by Manuel Saez, Xisco Mensua and Guillermo Paneque. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed. The technique was invented by surrealists. Surrealism principal founder André Breton reported that it started in fun, but became playful and eventually enriching. In the beginning were Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prévert, Benjamin Péret, Pierre Reverdy, and André Breton. Other participants probably included Max Morise, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Simone Collinet, Tristan Tzara, Georges Hugnet, René Char, and Paul and Nusch Éluard. Henry Miller often partook of the game to pass time in French cafés during the 1930s. Manuel Sáez (born 6 March 1961) is a Spanish, self-taught artist. Since 1984, he has been living and working in Valencia. The Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana describes Manuel Sáez as among the most important painters of the turn of the 21st century owing to his simultaneously sensual and psychological approach to the world of objects, landscapes, figures and portraits. As a resident fellow of the Spanish Fine Arts Academy in Rome in 1990, Sáez elaborated a series of portraits called Biografia no autorizada In 1991 Sáez held his first important show at the Fundació La Caixa. in Valencia In 1996 he presented his first retrospective, Colección Exclusiva 1984-1995, in the Club Diario Levante of Valencia, as well as the Madrid Circle of Fine Arts, the Salas Verónicas of Murcia, the Castellón Delegation and the Brocense of Cáceres. In 2000 Sáez exhibited in Mexico City's Museo Rufino Tamayo and in the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM) in Valencia. In 2008 Sáez's work could be seen at the Sala Parpalló in Valencia. In 2003-04, Dispersions was exhibited at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami. In 2007, Sáez's work is featured in the Valencian Institute of Modern Art's (IVAM) El Pop Art en la Colección del IVAM ("Pop Art in the IVAM Collection") in Valencia.[12] Xisco Mensua Initially studied at Escuelas Virtèlia, but followed an atypical school career due to illness. Began to paint in 1978. Took a course in painting at the Escola d’Arts i Oficis (Valencia), where he had lived since the age of eight. Lived in Barcelona from 1982 to 1987, studying art at the Escola Eina for the first two years. Returned to Valencia and began exhibiting in 1990. Produced works in co-operation with Fernando Ros and Mim Juncà, as well as designing stage sets for the theatre. Now forms part of the Jacques Moran collective. Through drawing, Mensua creates a fictional world in an exercise in which he transfigures common references, whether intimate or biographic, political or social. Guillermo Paneque Seville, 1963 Spanish painter. He completed his artistic training at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Seville, Director and founder, along with Rafael Agredano and José Espaliú, of the magazine Figura in 1984. It is in the mid-eighties when his work is made known within the Andalusian artistic scene, through the production of small format paintings populated with references and symbols from the religious and everyday environment that the author mixes with a playful sense and with erotic characters that reveal a clear rejection of the Andalusian artistic tradition. His work evolves towards a formal synthesis and an iconographic cleansing in the line of conceptual art. He has starred in numerous solo exhibitions and participated in important collectives, among which include: Aperto 86 at the Venice Biennial (1986), Spain 87. Dynamiques and Interrogations (1987) at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris, Spanish natures...

These stunning original project drawings, hand-painted with colored pencil on translucent tracing paper, were designed by a French artist circa the 1960s. The two paintings feature a...

These stunning original project drawings, hand-painted with colored pencil on translucent tracing paper were designed by a French artist, circa the 1960s. The two paintings feature a...

These lovely original project drawings, hand-painted with colored pencils on translucent tracing paper, were designed by a French artist circa the 1960s. The two paintings feature a study of kitchen accessories: a soup tureen and a vintage coffee bean...

These stunning original project drawings, hand-painted with colored pencils on translucent tracing paper, were designed by a French artist circa the 1960s. The two paintings feature ...

This original project drawing, hand-painted with colored pencil on translucent tracing paper, was designed by a French artist circa the 1960s. The painting features a geometric study...