André Gabriel Bernadou (1910-1985) - Composition

Gouache on paper.

André Gabriel Bernadou was born on January 13, 1910 in Paris and died on June 27, 1985 in the same city. At the beginning of his painting career, he also worked as a surveyor, an experience that would durably influence his conception of space and the construction of pictorial space.

He trained with Paul Baudouin, from whom he retained a great rigor of drawing and a structured organization of pictorial space, which would form the foundation of his work.

From the 1930s, he regularly exhibited and became known for his still lifes and landscapes. He participated in the Salon des Indépendants between 1931 and 1939, as well as in the Salon des Tuileries between 1934 and 1939, marking his gradual entry into the Paris art milieu.

In 1943, his work was the subject of a biography written by historian Armand Boutillier du Retail, published by éditions de l’Union Française, marking critical recognition in the milieu.

After the war, his painting evolved toward a more structured language and abstraction. This evolution was accompanied by an openness to other forms of creation. In 1952, he notably illustrated entirely the poetry collection Poésie by Henry de Malvesin.

From 1967, he was represented by Galerie Simone Heller, rue de Seine in Paris, an important venue of the Parisian art scene defending artists such as Auguste Herbin and Paul Klee, where he presented a solo show in November 1967.

In 1971, he developed experimental work on slate incorporating materials such as stones, colored glass, lead and tar, pushing further the material and tactile dimension of his painting.

Continuing this line of research, in 1972 he was invited to realize the engraved illustration of the score “Divertimento n°15” by Paul Arma, incorporating it into the intimate circle of major European avant-garde artists who illustrated his scores, counting notably Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Marc Chagall, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, Constantin Brâncuși, Paul Klee, Le Corbusier, Pierre Soulages, Victor Vasarely, Sonia Delaunay, Francis Picabia, Jean Arp, László Moholy-Nagy, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Alberto Magnelli, André Lanskoy… **

In 1973, he participated in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, confirming his anchorage in postwar abstract research and the culmination of his artistic evolution.

The works produced mainly in the 1960s, the most accomplished and characteristic period of his career, are now held in several major public collections, notably at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Musée de Céret and the Centre national des arts plastiques.

Thanks to his abstract work and experimentation with matter, André Gabriel Bernadou occupies a singular place in 20th-century French painting.