Michel Suret-Canale (XX-XXI) - Sous le pont Mirabeau ...

Under the Mirabeau Bridge...

Michel Suret-Canale — 2026
Oil on canvas — Original work

“Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine
And our loves…”

These lines by Guillaume Apollinaire, excerpts from his famous poem Le Pont Mirabeau, published in the Alcools collection in 1913, count for me among the most beautiful in all French literature. This painting is a homage to Apollinaire, to his poetry, but also to this artistic modernity of which he was one of its most ardent defenders.

The Mirabeau Bridge also holds a special place in my personal history. When I was a student at the university, I used to cross it daily to reconnect with the woman who would become my first wife. Apollinaire’s poem resonates in me in a singular way, mixing memories of youth, love, and the passage of time.

But “Under the Mirabeau Bridge” is also, and perhaps above all, a painting about modernity.
I deliberately avoided any picturesque or descriptive portrayal of Paris. The bridge, its arches, the surrounding constructions, and the reflections of the Seine become elements of a composition that is almost abstract.

The painting is built of color masses, contrasts of value, and generous impasto. The knife-work, particularly present, gives the pictorial material a physical presence that transcends mere representation.
The architectures fragment, perspectives jostle, colors emancipate themselves from reality. The painting thus oscillates between figuration and abstraction, in an approach that claims the heritage of the great 20th-century avant-gardes.
I did not look at a photograph or a drawing of the famous bridge at all. It is not so much about representing the Pont Mirabeau as about rediscovering, through painting, the emotion of a place, of a poem, and of a memory.

As in Apollinaire’s poem, time passes, loves pass, but something remains. And perhaps that is what the painting seeks to retain.

Michel Suret-Canale
Painter — Doctor in Arts and Sciences of Art
Emeritus Senior Lecturer

The photograph showing the work in an interior is a previsualization produced by AI, provided solely as a setting. The work itself is entirely hand-painted.
Original work, signed on the front and back.
Sold with its certificate of authenticity (and value estimate based on the artist’s Akoun rating) signed.

About the artist
Michel Suret-Canale has been a painter for more than fifty years. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in France and abroad and is represented in numerous private collections. His artistic career, publications, exhibitions, and art research activities are well documented. Collectors who wish to learn more can simply search the Internet for his name: Michel Suret-Canale.