Alfred Manessier

Construction of the Bridge in Red - Lithograph, Mourlot

1972

Alfred Manessier was born on 5 December 1911 in Saint-Ouen in the Somme. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Amiens (1924 - 1929), he completed his training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and spent a brief period in the studio of the painter Roger Bissière, who introduced him to frescoes and to whom he took refuge in Boissiérettes in the Lot at the beginning of the war. From 1947 onwards, stained glass occupied a large part of his work, which was now based on abstraction. He carried out about twenty projects in France, including the stained glass windows for the church of Saint-Michel des Bréseux (Doubs), his first commission (1948 - 1950), those in the church of Saint-Pierre de Trinquetaille in Arles (1953), and the chapel of Sainte-Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus et de la Sainte Face in Hem (Nord - 1957). The stained glass windows of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Abbeville, one of his last commissions carried out between 1982 and 1993, are considered his masterpiece. He also executed a dozen stained glass projects in Switzerland, Germany and Spain. As an abstract painter of the Ecole de Paris, Manessier frequently tackled subjects related to the Catholic religion. His paintings are often inspired by the landscapes of Northern France, but also by his travels. From 1956 onwards, he produced a large number of political paintings entitled "Hommage", which echoed the violence in the world. The dissemination of his artworks in the public space through these stained glass windows gave him great notoriety during his lifetime, and his paintings were awarded numerous international prizes (such as the Grand Prix of the Venice Biennale, which he received in 1962, alongside Albert Giacometti, who received the Grand Prix for sculpture). He died on 1er August 1993 as a result of a car accident, shortly after the completion of the stained glass windows in Abbeville.