Pierre Albert Leroux (1890-1959) - Ritratto di Soldato al fronte - 1915

Pierre Albert Leroux (1890 - 1959)

Beautiful portrait of a Soldier at the Front - World War I

Watercolor on postcard paper

April 27, 1915

The painting is unsigned, but it is listed in the catalog of the show organized by the Compagnia del Disegno of Milan:
PIERRE ALBERT LEROUX / Watercolors / 1914-1918
Enzo Fabiani (critical text)
8 - Untitled, 27 April, 1915, / watercolor on postcard paper, cm 14x9

The original catalog is not included, only some black-and-white photocopies concerning the critical text and the image of the work
Catalog size 11.5x17.0 cm

On the back of the painting is the cartouche of the Compagnia del Disegno

Painting dimensions: 14.0x9.0 cm

Frame dimensions: 34.5x29.5 cm

Excellent condition (see photos)

Biographical and critical notes taken from the critical text by Enzo Fabiani:

Pierre Albert Leroux was born November 10, 1890 in Versailles and died in 1959.
He studied with Fernand Cormon and Jean Pierre Laurens.
...among the best war witnesses... who manages to synthesize, and convey to anyone, that cynical and ruthless offense to humanity that is war, even if small, the surface at his disposal: as miniaturists did, or icon painters did. ... to say much with little, and often in conditions of discomfort and terror, requires a capacity for great concentration in seeing and feeling the trembnding motive, and swiftness in defining it: while the earth around and the very air explode, and fellow soldiers nearby are torn by bombs. ...the draftsman or war-chronicle painter may touch up later, but it is the instantaneous first sensation, that matters: and it must not be betrayed by any embellishment. ... Now looking at these works one cannot help but note an able technique, thanks to which, by avoiding the illustrative, he defines the various motives and moments (the trenches, disturbed and offended landscapes, the little scenes) with passionate wisdom: yet managing to achieve the deepest effectiveness in the figures of the soldiers, which have a kind of painful monumentality, which might recall our Sironi (but curiously, there is some solution that seems premorlottian), in a continuous personal tremor, and a coloration always corresponding to the motive and its significance. ...

Enzo Fabiani, writer
Fucecchio, 1924 - Milan, 2013

Enzo Fabiani, poet, storyteller and journalist, was born in 1924 in Torre (Fucecchio), where he returned from time to time to revisit the Cerbaie woods and the Padule, places that remained dear to him and that often returned as background and inspiration for his stories and poems.
He left his native town in the Sixties to move to Milan, after having frequented the Florentine cultural circles. In Milan, where Salvatore Quasimodo helped him find work, he was for a long time a journalist for the weekly “Gente,” curating the literary and artistic section and publishing thousands of articles, thanks to which he was named Commander of the Republic.
At the same time he made a name for himself as a poet, and in 1964 he had already won the Cervia Poetry Prize. In Fucecchio at the Il Poggio Cultural Circle he presented his collection of poems, “Nomen,” with contributions from Piero Malvolti, Carlo Betocchi and the theologian Don Divo Barsotti. After “Nomen” he published other poetic collections: “Le ferite,” “Beati gli amori,” “Nel canto del fuoco,” “L’Ordinotte,” “La sposa vivente,” “Il trono d’ombra,” which later merged into the book in which all his works can be found: “Il cammino e la pietà,” containing poems written from 1954 to 1999, published by Connect. He died in Milan in 2013.

Critics and poets such as Giorgio Caproni, Carlo Betocchi, Giuseppe Prezzolini, Mario Pomilio, Silvio Ramat, Divo Barsotti, Giacinto Spagnoletti have written about him.

A poet of deep religious inspiration, Fabiani used to say of himself: "My ‘dramatis personae’ and my ‘spirits’ may seem bold, but they are mendicants obsessed by memory, more than by the presence of God. Of me I would say rather that, although I am a lost and unhappy soul among the ‘rays of darkness’ of life, I do not dare not believe."