Jean Bertholle

Jean Bertholle (June 26th 1909, Dijon - December 6th 1996) is a painter French of the News École of Paris.

Biography

Jean Bertholle is born on June 26th, 1909 with Dijon. He studies painting with the École of the Art schools of Dijon, Saint-Etienne and Lyon. He becomes acquainted with Marie-Antoinette Duraz whom he will marry. In 1934 it meets the painters Roger Bissière, Alfred Manessier, Jean Moal, Gustave Singier and the sculptor Etienne Martin which will become his/her friends.

It are found in the group " Témoignage", animated by Marcel Michaud, which was a gathering of spirits only linked by their affinities. Whereas they are still in Lyon, they undertake to know cubism and surrealism, while raising questions of a spiritual nature about the religion, philosophy, the esotericism, which also hold their attention. In Paris, the Group profits from the support of the galerist Rene Breteau, who has initially a 9 rue des Canettes shop, then a gallery street Bonaparte, places very attended in the years preceding the Second war immediately.

The painting of Jean Bertholle then is stylized enough (almost geometrical) and fantastic. Bertholle collaborates with Moal and Zelmann, in 1938, for the execution of the fresco (1500 m ²) of the French house of the World Fair of New York and takes part in 1941 in the exposure Twenty young painters of French tradition , first demonstration, organized by Bazaine of the painting of avant-garde under the Occupation.

Become artistic director of the Faience manufacture of Gien, it cannot be devoted any more to painting as much as it would wish it and it suffers much from it. He however manages to produce enough to expose several times to the gallery Jeanne Bucher, and he is selected three times for the Biennial one of Venice, like for the biennial one of São Paulo. In 1953 it constructs stained glasses for the Carmel of Cherbourg. The year 1955 is particularly important in its career, because it is at this time that it directs towards the nonfigurative Peinture. The same year, it takes part in the exposure of Contemporary art of the Institut Carnegie of Pittsburgh.

Thereafter will take place of many personal exposures, in particular with the Roque gallery, Raspail boulevard with Paris. A contract with this gallery will enable him to give up its functions with the faience manufacture of Gien and to devote themselves entirely to painting, which will enable him to look further into its research and to present rather large numbers of works for the retrospective to the Musée of the Art schools of Metz in 1964. From 1965 to 1980, Jean Bertholle, named by Andre Malraux, sign as professor and foreman to the 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of the Art schools of Paris.

A new turning in its career occurs in 1970: it returns to the figurative Peinture. It is at this time that it carries out a great triptych ( rise with the Calvaire , the Crucifixion , the Résurrection ), on the request of the priest of Saint-Germain-the Auxerrois, also chaplain of the School of the Art schools. Large retrospective take place in 1972 with the Museum of the Art schools of Dijon, then with Besancon and Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer. Bertholle is received in audience deprived with the the Vatican by Paul VI in 1974. After multiple exposures, in particular in retrospective and South America with the School of the Art schools of Paris, in 1983 Bertholle is elected with the Institut of France.

In 1989 its works are presented to the Academy of the Art schools of Moscow, then it is devoted to tables to the religious topics, died natures, the naked ones and interiors.

Jean Bertholle dies on December 6th, 1996.

One can see his works in many large French museums and foreigners: National museum of modern art of Paris, Caen, Dijon, Saint-Etienne, Lyon, Bern, Essen, Mannheim, Zurich, Museums of the Vatican…

Work

Early admiror of Puvis de Chavannes, the first influence notable on his work will be that of Edouard Manet, which he discovers in 1932. When it settles in Paris in 1934, it contacts the Fauvisme, the Cubisme and the Surréalisme. Certain tables of end of the year 30 even make think of max Ernst. It is fascinated by the strangeness, the symbolism and the irony of Jerome Bosch, like by freedom, the satirical spirit and the humanism of Pieter Bruegel. Bertholle is sensitive to the way in which Bosch present the irruption of the madness in the daily newspaper and to the diversion of function of the usual objects. At Bruegel, he appreciates the mental health always present, even when the reason seems put at the variation.

Little by little Bertholle moves away from the surreality and the figuration. In forms which still must with the Picasso of the " métamorphoses" and of Guernica , it has the allusive structures. Thus, the port, the boats are presented, not like sights, but like signs of Venice. More and more, its concerns join those of his/her friends painters Bissière, Manessier, Moal, Elvire Jan, of the poets Camille Bourniquel and Jean Lescure, and of the writer Max-pol. Fouchet. It does not go less far that Manessier in the way of the Abstraction: many works are entitled then Composition , Peinture .

In the field of the Stained glass, it constructs a whole for Our-Lady-of-the-Road-White, close to Ferney-Voltaire. However, its major work is in Armbouts-Cappel (Northern). Like Alfred Manessier, it is very attentive with the sunning, and it composes the 53 stained glasses by holding account of their orientation. Sensitive to the rates/rhythms and the colors of the surrounding countryside, it arranges the veins of the canopies as recalls of the outside world in which the church fits. However, Bertholle is interested especially in the elements of which he wants to offer signs: sky, ground, water…

This concern of meaning the natural elements is found in the series taking for Venice topic. This city lends itself to the composition of works where the stone is interlaced, water, the sky, sun. Contours like are corroded by the always renewed plays of the air and the light. The forms are dismantled to leave room only to the relations évanescentes between the elements. This concern finds in the forest of Brocéliande (1966), and the four elements (1976).

Then, whereas nonfigurative painting is rather largely allowed by the public, Bertholle returns to figurative painting. It finds the topic of the horse, painted died natures in which one finds sometimes an echo of the art of Matisse, and the beautiful naked ones with let us tons hot like those of Modigliani, accompanied by light draped white.

Its work is marked by its taste for manual work, the respect of the techniques and the craftsmen. Like Manessier, it knew to put at listening experts without never seeking any virtuosity.

"An artist worthy of this name will always impose on his works a particular seal. One starts by being a good craftsman without the craft industry becoming know-how, then one becomes an artist… if one can! At all events, a good craftsman will be better always than poor a artiste." (Philippe Leburgue, Jean Bertholle , p. 104, Ides and Calendes, 2005).

Its teaching, as well at the School of the Art schools than in the Academy of Painting Saint-Castling as it founded, testifies to this attention. The thorough knowledge of the history of painting and the training of techniques (chemistry of the pigments, use of the binders, etc) seemed to him absolute needs to become an authentic painter.

Sacred art with massacred art

A true faith in art - without being allotted a redeemer role to this one and Messianic with the artist - made it possible Bertholle not to succumb to the " enseignements" " mage" Gurdjieff. Fascinated by the character and, like good of others, blind man to the inconsistencies of obscure doctrines, Bertholle, in its spiritual search, was let capture. A certain taste for the esotericism and the symbolic system laid out to with it. Bertholle, among so much of other naive and for its misfortune, was filled with enthusiasm for this thought in which some see unsoundable depths, and others a conceptual confusion hardly recovering a theoretical vacuum.

"Instead of acquiring wisdom and serenity, Bertholle lost itself in the extra-sensitive meanders of a forest which it did not control any more, of which it had believed, like the Hermit, capacity to penetrate in the middle and fight its interior dragon. Quite to the contrary, in fact the monsters failed to be right of its former Gods, the teaching of Gurdjieff resembling rather the prayers bourdonnantes of the penitent blacks accompanying a criminal with the torment that with the virtues by Eucharistie." ( Work quoted , p.41).

Fortunately for Bertholle, Gurdjieff expressed a very deep contempt for the art, which it presented like an activity at the very least stripped of interest, vulgar product of a spirit unable to rise by the meditation on the level of the transcendent truths, and being let guide by random psychomotor mechanisms.

"There he saw only the subjective demonstration of a thought déchue which, far from constituting a whole of supports for the meditation or of the interior improvement, was actually only the rather miserable expression of individualism and the relativism. Altogether, a fugacious bunch of impressions where all was about the accident, denying of this fact all intellection." ( Work quoted , p.42).

Bertholle could not accept this devaluation of art, and its joy of painting, sometimes interfered doubts, was its way of cure.

Bertholle did not return therefore a worship with Article It was not those which had seen a Messianic activity there, even rédemptrice. The act, for him ascetic, to paint was an act of faith. As for Elvire Jan, to paint was " its way of prier". To pose on the table such key of color was for him a way of making itself present at God. Also there is the same spiritual dash towards God in the forest of Brocéliande (1966), in a Composition of 1957, in dead natures of the Seventies, that in the Golgotha (formerly in the private apartments of Paul VI, currently in Pontifico Roma Magiore), in the Chemin of Damas (the Vatican, room of the Consistory), in the Magnificat of 1958 or in large the Triptyque of 1976 (Évangile according to Saint Marc, Théophanie, Arche of Alliance).

November 5th, 1976, Jean Bertholle is received, with his wife, in audience deprived by Paul VI who had wished to make acquire by the Vatican one of his tables. Golgotha had been retained, and the pope spoke to him about it in very right terms. There remained all the remainder of its life deeply marked by this meeting. It gave a beautiful testimony of it:

"In front of us the pope smiling Paul VI. Instantaneously an impression of calm, appeasing. Very simply Paul VI addressed to us in tinted French of the mélodieux song of the Italian accent. From its person a serenity so higher than all the men emanated than today still I am impressed by it. Time had been abolished, the outside world also, the reference to tangible had disappeared and over the moment I believe not to have realized that I was in the presence of the spiritual leader of all Christendom and that we speak ensemble." (Reported remarks by Philippe Leburgue, work quoted , pp. 107-108).

Bertholle re-examined Paul VI on October 8th, 1977: for its 80 years, 80 Christian artists had offered each one to him a table whose topic was in relation to Saint Paul. Bertholle had offered its Chemin of Damas .

November 30th, 1983, Jean Bertholle is elected with the Académie of the Art schools. Sat at the sides of Bernard Buffet, it is received on November 7th, 1984. In its speech, after having spoken in praise of its predecessor Andre Planson, it protests against the productions, which often are reduced to simple installations, in front of which a public of snobs makes mine be filled with wonder. Bertholle is indignant in connection with those in which it refuses to see artists, and who, supported by speculators, bernent the amateurs with " œuvres" whose only interest is due to the manner, even with the matter of which they are made. Philippe Leburgue reports these word addressed to a galierist of the street of the Seine, which exposed paintings of Soulages:

"Lastly, Bernard, you do not have shame to expose dirty oil spread out with essuie-glaces." ( Work quoted , p. 98).

It knew to resist all the fashions and was opposed to this art which it describes as American which often knew to take only what there had been of worse in European art. If it is not enough to be cursed to be a painter, it is not enough either to gesticuler to be an artist.

"The drama of modern times, said Jean Cocteau, it is that the silly thing was put at penser." (Bertholle, Speech of reception at the Institute ).

Worker demanding, ascetic, it knew that its mission was not to surprise those which did not have the virtue to be astonished. He had become of good tone, at the despisers of the true painting, to disparage the work of Bertholle, Elvire Jan, Manessier, Moal, Bazaine. But, finally, he did not suffer from it too much: when it is seen from which the insult comes, the honor consists in being the target about it.

"Oh! reputation! the good reputation which all my life showed me finger gives me a favorable prejudice towards the mauvaise". (Matter made by Bertholle and brought back by Philippe Leburgue, work quoted p.89).

However, Bertholle was not these the grumpy nostalgic ones of an alleged lost paradise. It was trustful in the future of painting, trustful in a youth without prejudices, capable of unforeseeable creations:

"There exist fortunately young painters who work far from the noise but sandwiched between a corrupted back and an avant-garde. They are the marginal ones, the clandestine ones, silencers. Their work does not obey any modernistic gun, but it is in modernity. No acrobatics, no grimace makes conspicuous them. It is often difficult to classify. These young people will be the spearhead of a true renewal. They will show at the great day, in the future, which can be alive works in the permanence of art and the perenniality of the temperaments which precede that of modes. Who will say that I am not optimistic? " (Reported remarks by Philippe Leburgue, work quoted , p.136)

Anecdote

In 1993, painted Bertholle, in an allusion to its “Homage to Delacroix”, a “Homage to Fantin-Latour” (50,5 X 142 cm). It appears there freely, joined together in a kind of banquet, his companions, at the beginning of the Années 1930, Académie Ranson, the ones already disappeared, the other old ones of some fifty years more. One recognizes in particular, from left to right, Bertholle itself, Reichel, Bissière, Moal, Seiler, Etienne Martin, Manessier. Bertholle symbolically adds to it the presence of his/her friend Zoran Mušič who attended the Academy forever.

Selective bibliography

Pierre Descargues, Bertholle , Literary Presses of France, Paris, 1952.
Bertholle , foreword of Jean Lescure, Gallery Jeanne To rough-hew and Galerie Castling, Paris, 1956.
Bertholle , foreword of Jacques Lassaigne, Gallery Castling, Paris, 1959.
Jean-Louis Ferrier, Bertholle , the Museum of Pocket, Georges Fall editor, Paris, 1959.
Bertholle , foreword of Max-pol. Fouchet, Gallery Castling, Paris, 1961.
Jean Bertholle , foreword of Joseph-Emile Muller, Museums of Metz, Metz, 1964.
Bertholle , foreword of Joseph-Emile Muller, Marbach Gallery, Paris, 1965.
Jean Lescure, Of an obscure clearness , engraving of Bertholle, Villand Gallery and Galanis, Paris, 1966.
Jean Bertholle , foreword of Gaetan Picon, Museum of Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer, 1972.
Testimony Group, 1936-1943 , Museum of the Art schools, Lyon, 1976.
Bertholle , texts of Max-pol. Fouchet, Joseph-Emile Muller and Pierre Dehaye, discussion with Gerard Xuriguera, Editions Modern art, Paris, 1977.
Max-pol. Fouchet, Bertholle , Editions the Sphinx, Paris, 1979.
Bertholle, Chastel, Singier , texts of Jean Musy, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, Bernard Dorival, Jacques Lagrange, Max-pol. Fouchet, Georges-Emmanuel Clancier and Jean Lescure, 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of the Art schools, Paris, 1982.
Legendary Horse , texts of the Apocalypse of Holy Jean, Homère, Tacit, Christian of Troyes, Hocking, Clement Marot, Buffon, Goethe, Federico Garcia Lorca, Robert Mallet, Charles Quintrec, Max-pol. Fouchet, Jean Guichard-Meili, Robert Hammer, Marie-Claire Bancquart, Henry Falconer, illustrated by Jean Bertholle, foreword of Robert Mallet, Argraphie Editions, Paris, 1983.
In Venice, blackjack drawings of Bertholle, preceded by a maintenance of the artist with Jean Guichard-Meili , Éditions Carries South, Paris, 1985.

Marcel Michaud, Lyon, 1933-1958, Stylclair, Testimony Group, Gallery Folklore , text of Bernard Gavoty, Lyons Space of Contemporary art, Lyon, 1989 (76 p.)

Bertholle , foreword of Denis Huisman, Gallery Art-Mel, Paris, 1991.

Bertholle , Editions Philippe Amaury, Saint-Ouen, 1993.

Lydia Harambourg, Jean Bertholle , in the School of Paris 1945-195, Dictionary of the painters , Ides Editions and Calendes, Neuchâtel, 1993 (.

Jean Bertholle , foreword of Robert Hammer, Books of Penitent, Ciotat, 1997.

Jean Bertholle, 1909-1996 , texts of Robert Hammer and Lydia Harambourg, Together episcopal, the Puy-en-Velay, 1998.

Michel-Georges Bernard, Jean Bertholle or the Scene of the World , Editions of Orycte, Paris, 1998.

Alain Vollerin, the Testimony group of Lyon , Memory of Arts, Lyon, 2001 (120 p.).

Bertholle, Moal , foreword of Michel-Georges Bernard, House of Arts, Antony, 2003.

Philippe Leburgue, Jean Bertholle , Ides Editions and Calendes, Neuchâtel, 2005.

Internal bonds

External bonds

Collection of the National museum of modern art Centers Georges Pompidou (to seek: Bertholle)
Site of Association " Friends of Jean Bertholle" : Gallery, Biography, Bibliography, Exposures, Chart of the collections, Association, Current events, Bonds.
Speech of Guy de Rougemont, successor of Jean Bertholle at the Institute.
Photographs of the site of the Meeting of the National museums.

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