Robert Marc

Robert Marc 20th Century Abstract Oil Painting

Circa 1980

Robert Marc was born in Auxerre, France, in 1943. He spent his youth in Switzerland and returned to France as a young man determined to enter art school. Like generations before and after him, he discovered painting not in school, but in the great museums of Europe. He considered the established masters his real teachers and gained particular inspiration from the work of Russian artists Malevich and Rodchenko. Paris of the 1960s was a seminal time in Marc’s life, with its stimulations ranging from the jazz of John Coltrane to the African art in the galleries on Rue Guenegaud. Unlike many of his peers, however, Marc deliberately avoided the limelight of Parisian life, content to spend all his time quietly working in the French countryside. His paintings are rich and complex with a palette and surface quality that warm and harmonize with his geometrically constructed planes of color. With technical and stylistic qualities reminiscent of the Cubists, the artist’s signature motifs and unique style are revealed with close study, as he explores an infinite variety of abstract cubist shapes, compelling the viewer to see the world through his fractured lens. Robert Marc exhibited in France and internationally, including shows in New York and Tokyo, developing a wide following throughout Europe, Japan and the United States until his untimely death in 1993. With a strong record on the secondary market, Marc’s paintings today form part of important private and public collections throughout the world. (Biography provided by Stern Pissarro Gallery)