Gérard Desgranges (1919-2006) - Marine

Gérard DESGRANGES (1919-2006)

Marine

Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 38 x 55 cm
Signed bottom right.
Provenance: Family of the artist

Painting in perfect condition.
No frame.

Original work delivered with invoice and certificate of authenticity.
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Gérard DESGRANGES was born in Coutances, in the Manche department (50), on February 24, 1919. Died in 2006.

Perhaps this origin explains his renewed attachment to heavy rainy skies, boats rocking with the tide, and trees bent under the wind.

In his family, art was an integral part of life (his father Guillaume-Jacques François DESGRANGES (1886-1967) was a renowned lithographer). Gérard DESGRANGES enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, after having been awarded first prize in the Dessin des Arts Décoratifs competition. He also worked a lot in studios and received guidance from Yves BRAYER.

While pursuing a parallel career as a teacher, he exhibited—with the greatest of his time—in numerous prestigious galleries: the Epona, Charpentier, and Katia Granoff galleries in Paris; the Hamon Gallery in Le Havre.

Naturally aligning with the Paris School, he belongs to the movement of the 'poetic realism' ('he does transpose nature, yet remains attached to it. His still lifes and landscapes [...], allow him to give free rein to his love of nature and his imagination. His fish and beaches are boldly transposed and treated with lively, nervous, intelligent brushstrokes').

He loves nature and what it offers: stormy skies, abers, harbors, fishmongers, wildflowers. But also the Seasons that pass and return with emotions in constant renewal. But do not be mistaken, Gérard DESGRANGES is not a painter of nature. He draws inspiration from it, transposes it, seeks to recreate it, to inscribe it in his world. Figurative? He probably is, but remains autonomous regarding his subject.

He knows how to choose an original angle, seeks intimate vibration, the hidden meaning of things. Painter of correspondences? If drawing remains an indispensable framework, it only appears as a watermark. It is the painter’s craft that always wins. But the stroke adapts to what he wants to build.

Gérard DESGRANGES seeks to build a coherent show: no element of the painting is indifferent to the overall drama.

As said, 'he weighs, with the certainty of an analyst and a philosopher, the relationships 'beauty-matter' and cannot abandon a canvas until its definitive completion. [...] The strictest glazes play with the bold notes according to perfectly defined intentions, and it would be vain to imagine otherwise.'

Each parcel of the canvas is worked subtly.

There is often a 'material' that gives great vigor to the painted subject.

As Nicolas de Staël said, 'in painting, the contrast of textures is as important as the contrast of colors,' the painter must take advantage of 'all the differences offered by the material, and then color takes on a much deeper meaning.'

With DESGRANGES, color has dynamic and aesthetic value. He seeks color harmony. The grays of the beginning gave way to an increasingly colorful and luminous palette.

How to characterize his oeuvre? Compose and transpose. Lead, through intelligence and sensitivity, the admirer to desire: red fruit cuts, forest mushrooms, trout caught on the fly, and flowers. And then seascapes, especially at low tide. All this without nostalgia.

Gérard DESGRANGES is an artist who does not limit himself to canvases (of all sizes, by the way). He painted numerous watercolors and created many pen-and-ink drawings.

Xavier RISSELET

Awards:
Grand Prix des Jeunes of the Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1956
Lauréat du Prix Othon-Friesz, 1956
Prix d'Aix en Provence, 1958
Prix de dessin de la signature cachée (Marianne Gilbert), 1959
Prix du Port-Autonome du Havre, 1963
Prix de Barbizon, 1964
Prix Bernard Esdras-Gosse
Ecole de Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 1965
Medal of Gold at the Salon des Artistes Français, 1974

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