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Céret Art Gallery - Exhibitions - past and present
Saturday 20th June - Saturday 31st October 2009
"Céret, un siècle de paysages sublimés"
Georges Braque
The exhibition « Céret : un siècle de paysages sublimés » takes a look, via landscape, at 20th century painters who have stayed in or around Céret, or been linked to the town through their painting.
Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Auguste Herbin, Chaïm Soutine, Pierre Brune, André Masson, Manolo, Pinkus Krémègne, Juan Gris, Francis Picabia, Georges Deniker, Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy, Jean Marchand, Moïse Kisling, Max Jacob, Maurice Loutreuil, Frank Burty Haviland, André Lhote..... have all left their mark.
The exhibition also includes regional artists such as Etienne Terrus, Aristide Maillol, Louis Bausil, Camille Descossy....
At the beginning of the 20th century, Céret, capital of the Vallespir, was a small town of 3800 inhabitants, with tall, narrow houses and cobbled streets. Lucky to have some cottage industry, (espadrille, fabrics, barrels, cork…..), the town attracted visitors from all around, with its festivals, corridas, bandas.
Just around the corner, the little fishing port of Collioure became the centre of fauvism when Henri Matisse and André Derain spent time there between 1906 and 1914, joined by friends Marquet, Manguin and Camoin.
Juan Gris
Céret quickly became part of this great artistic adventure and in 1910 Catalan sculptor Manolo Hugué, (known as Manolo) painter Frank Burty Haviland and composer Déodat de Séverac settled in Céret.
Between 1911 and 1913, at the height of the Cubist period, they were joined by their friends from Montmartre; Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Auguste Herbin, Max Jacob and Jean Marchand, amongst others, who all spent time in Céret.
Dubbed the "Mecque du cubisme" (Mecca of cubism) by André Salmon, Céret took its honoured place in cubist history.
After the First World War several of these artists, including Auguste Herbin, Manolo, Juan Gris, returned, joined by new artists from Montparnasse including *Pierre Brune, (the initiator of the museum,) André Masson, Marc Chagall, Pinkus Kremegne, and Chaïm Soutine...
Later, during the Second World War, a third wave of artists fleeing from Nazism took refuge in the town; Raoul Dufy, Tristan Tzara, Jean Dubuffet, Albert Marquet.
Max Jacob
The Museum of Modern Art in Céret was inaugurated on the 18th June 1950 in the rooms of a 17th. Century Carmelite convent. As the years passed, its reputation grew. In the 1980’s the town decided to enlarge and renovate it and entrusted Joséphine Matamoros with the project. The new museum was inaugurated on the 17th. December 1993 by the President of France.
This exhibition of more than 250 great works, painted by more than 50 artists, allows the visitor to wander through the great painting movements (cubism, expressionism, figuration, abstract) that have marked the region through the 20th century and to see on canvas, within the gallery, the magnificent scenery around us.
*Pierre Brune dreamed of creating a museum of modern art which would retrace the town’s history of art and artists. Thanks to the assistance of Picasso and Matisse, and with the support of other artists, collectors and interested parties, he succeeded in assembling a fine collection of art and winning over the municipality.
Vincent Bioulès
La terrasse à la villa Bianco
Exhibition: Céret art gallery - 17th June - 1st October
Vincent Bioulès was born in 1938 in Montpellier, where he now lives and works.
He began his early painting career with traditional paintings of countryside based around a particular theme - an oak tree, light, the sky.......
From 1967 to 1982 he worked at the Aix School of Art. In the 1960s, his work became abstract following the fashion of the day, during which time he joined the geometrically abstract *Support, Surface movement which emerged in Nice in 1969.
However, during the 70s, he made a conscious decision to leave the abstract behind, as he gradually returned to figurative art. Since 1976, he has systematically tackled all the major themes of painting: landscapes, interiors, portraits and nudes.
He rounded up his teaching career at the Paris Beaux-Arts academy in October 1999, and has exhibited in New York, Zurich and Paris (Templon, then Vidal Saint Phalle since 1992).
His exhibition at the Céret Musée d’Art features around 80 selected works from 1966 to present day, including paintings conceived during a stay in Céret, and mirrors his reflection on scenery, space and the themes that have occupied him as an artist during his life.
* Support/ Surface or BRMT (an acronym of their founders) existed from 1967-1974 and was a group of French artists who sought to "liberate abstract art’s practice from the tyranny of taste, the banality of Expressionism, the sentimentality of late Surrealism and the purity of Art Concrete."
Maurice Loutreuil
vue de Collioure
Self portrait
Exhibition: Céret art gallery - October 21st 2006 - February 18th, 2007
Born in 1885 (died 1925) in Montmirail in the Sarthe, Maurice Loutreuil studied art with Jules Hervé-Mathé at Le Mans before heading off for Paris in 1910 where he was a regular on the Montmartre-Montparnasse artist scene, living from the drawing of caricatures for newspapers Le Charivari, l’Assiette au beurre, Pêle-Mêle, Sourire, Indiscret.... He was also a great ballet fan, fascinated in particular by Isadora Duncan, and several of his works featured the dancer.
He continued his training with Jacques-Ferdinand Humbert and Gabriel Ferrier, and, thanks to a study grant, was able to study in Italy in spring 1914, a stay that was cut short by the onset of the First World War. Revolted by war, and in order to avoid national service, Loutreuil travelled extensively around North Africa. He was captured and imprisoned for desertion but released when a doctor certified him "Folie raisonnante" - a little insane!
He returned regularly to Paris where he exhibited in the Salon d’Automne, and the Salon des Tuilerie.
In 1919, he stayed in Céret with André Masson.
In 1923, he returned home to the Sarthe where he painted a portrait of his father, and many more of the surrounding countryside, markets, local and local colour, and still life.
Othon Friesz
Exhibition: Céret art gallery - Until 30th September 2007
Othon Friesz (6th February 1879 - 10th January 1949), a native of Le Havre, was a French artist of the Fauvist movement. Encouraged at an early age by his parents to become a painter, he soon began training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre, where he worked at Charles-Marie Lhullier’s workshop. It was there that he met with Raoul Dufy and George Braque, with whom he developed a lasting friendship and later became travelling companions. Together with Matisse, they rebelled against the academic teaching of Bonnat, their professor in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and turned to the Fauvist movement of painting, an expressionist style, characterized by bold distortion of forms and exuberant colour. Friesz painted numerous views of the harbor and beaches around Marseilles and La Ciotat. Around 1908, Friesz’s work changed and became less explosive, a return to the more sober palette he had learned in Le Havre from his professor Charles Lhuillier, and to an early admiration for Poussin, Chardin, and Corot.
vue de Collioure
One of his particularly outstanding late works was the decoration for the Palais de Chaillot which he did with Raoul Dufy on the occasion of the world fair in Paris in 1937.
Raoul Dufy described Friesz as ‘the most gifted painter of our generation’ in 1934. Sadly for him, although he received much honour by the end of his life, he never attained the same status as some of his famous colleagues.
Othon Friesz is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.
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Céret art exhibitions - past and present
