Leon Gischia is a nonfigurative painter of the News École of Paris (1903 - 1991) which created many decorations and costumes for the popular National theater of Jean Vilar.
Biography
Leon Gischia is born on June 8th, 1903 with Dax in the Landes from a father engineer of Piedmontese origin and from a mother from old stock landaise. He makes in Dax his secondary studies, in 1920 with Bordeaux of the studies of History and the Art and Archeology, then in Paris with the Louis-the-Large college the National university prepares. He attends the museum of Bayonne and his/her uncle archeologist makes him discover painting Romance E, in particular the Fresque S of the Abbaye of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe.Leon Gischia, who draws since the ten years age, decides into 1921 to turn to painting and is registered with the modern Academy (where sign Emile Othon Friesz). After a few months of Military service in aviation it is reformed and makes its first voyages in Italy and Spain. It is impassioned then for the pictorial theories. From 1927 to 1930 it remains, carrying out advertisement drawings, in the United States where it becomes acquainted with Ernest Hemingway and binds with Alexander Calder.
Returned to France, Gischia meets Fernand Leger with which it teaches one moment with the modern Academy and André Beaudin, which commits it to take again painting. It takes part in 1937 in the Salon of the Young Artists (in particular near Jean Bertholle and Jean Moal) and, with Fernand Leger, in the decoration of the House of new Times of Le Corbusier to the World Fair of Paris.
Leon Gischia presents his first personal exposure to the gallery Jeanne Bucher in 1938 and takes part in 1941, at the sides of Bisssière, Bertholle, Moal, Alfred Manessier, Gustave Singier with the exposure of the " Twenty young painters of French tradition " organized by Jean Bazaine, first manifestation of the painting of avant-garde under the occupation, while the judgments of” degenerated art multiply”. Gischia at that time becomes acquainted with Maurice Estève and Edouard Pignon with which it exposes to the Gallery of France in 1943 and which will become, with Zoran Mušič, his/her friends.
Founding member of the Living room of May, Leon Gischia takes part in it of 1945 to 1957. As from 1944 it exposes to the Drouin Gallery, with the Galerie of France of Myriam Prévot and Gildo Caputo of 1950 to 1954, with the Galerie Villand and Galanis between 1957 and 1963, where it finds Roger Chastel, Maurice Estève, Jacques Lagrange, Charles Lapicque, then, settling in 1963 with Venice, in the large Italian and Swiss galleries. After a retrospective exposure organized to Paris in 1985 Gischia simultaneously starts again to present its paintings in the Parisian galleries.
In 1943 Leon Gischia binds with Jean Vilar and collaborates first once with him in 1945 for Meurtre in the cathedral of T.S. Eliot assembled in the Théâtre of the Old Dovecote. He defines then the scenic esthetics of the Popular National theater which Vilar directs while realizing between 1947 and the 1963 decorations and costumes of about thirty parts, in particular, until 1955, of those which are presented to the Festival of Avignon. He takes part thus in historical creations by Gerard Philippe of the Cid in 1949, of the Prince de Hombourg in 1951, of Lorenzaccio in 1952. With the length of this course, writes the editor Lucien Mazenod, it has " made a success of several capital experiments which made date in the history of scenography and marked of its style the theater of Vilar" (in Leon Gischia , Paris Art Center, 1985, p.31).
" A tree for the forest (…); a column for the temple; an armchair for the throne room (with, perhaps, a fabric end above); a mobile of Calder, black and money, for the storm… It is that the true decoration. (…) It would not know to act for the painter of theater to equip a given device and to light it more or less fortunately - but to as a whole design well a decorative apparatus such as the elements constitute an indivisible entity and acquire the rigor and the unit which, only, justify the passage of the work written with work représentée" writing in 1954 Gischia to summarize its refusal of any naturalism (handwritten letter with Jean Lescure, reproduced in Jean Lescure, Stechbook , Editions Proverb, 2000, p. 26).
In 1968 Leon Gischia receives the order, under the ministry of André Malraux, of two panels (540 m ²) of lava enamelled for the entry of the Faculty of Science of Jussieu (Edouard Albert architect). He in addition illustrated books of Jean Lescure (" Midsummer's Day of été" , poem included in " Drailles "), Philippe Soupault, Eugenio Montale, and of traditional works, Arétin, Shakespeare, Theodore de Bèze.
Gischia died on May 29th, 1991 in Venice. An important legacy (500 tables) was made by his wife Gerry Gischia at the town of Dax (Musée of Bordered).
Work
The pictorial work of Leon Gischia develops with the three essential moments length.The first is registered under the sign of the figuration. From 1917 to 1942 Gischia paints primarily landscapes, dead natures and portraits, and carries out many drawings. The influence of Matisse and the Deer appears there through the intensity of the color but especially by the elegance of the layouts and the taste of the arabesque. Dominates already there a hot pallet of reds and ochers. It is rather in the climate of the Cubisme, Fernand Leger and Picasso, that Gischia breaks up then into a more allusive figuration, of 1942 to 1946, the objects and figures which it paints under an equal light in broad flat tints. Through the simplification of the forms, graphics, around the topics of the Basque Trees or the Naked , the Harlequins or the Musicians , is done stylized more and more.
" It is not a question for us of affirming, to want to be original at all costs, even less to claim to make a synthesis - inevitably artificial - contradictory principles which evolved/moved to us, but to include in the work of our elder more or less immediate what there are living of and fort, to release the essential tendencies, to specify them, to put them in value and by contributing there as far as our means to the development of healthy and authenticates tradition" , Gischia writing in 1942, following the exposure of the “Twenty young painters of French tradition” in which it takes part (included in Leon Gischia , Paris Art Center, 1985, p. 10). On this Gischia way led in a second moment, of 1946 to 1960, the elements of its language, appreciably on the same topics, until the limit of the abstraction. The purified forms, balanced in a new classicism, reduce objects and figures to their only contours which, far from masking itself, show through one in another.
The work of Gischia, in a third moment, opens out as from 1960 until its death in an alive geometrization. unspecified surfaces primarily nonfigurative, derived from the squares, rectangles, triangles or rhombuses, freely imbricate the ones in the others. The variations of the color by the degrees of its intensity and the distribution of let us tons build an unstable space there where the plans, the ones compared to the others, exchange their distances, in turn in reliefs and hollow. Gischia does not give up therefore revisiting its preceding topics, through discrete allusions to the silhouettes of the things, vases and musical instruments, Arbres , Oiseaux and Nuages , sun and the moon, or beings, Arlequins or faces complementary to the Two friends .
Gischia privileges particularly, in the last decade of its work, the reds blazing and ochers, but also the brown ones and the burned grounds. One could think that this choice had been influenced by the sight that he discovered on the roofs of Venice since his opened workshop, on the last floor of an old palate, on all the orientations. For Jean Lescure, who accompanied his exposures by many forewords, Gischia questioned there well more the first Venetian Peinture, the gold funds of Cimabue, the hot colors of the funds of Tintoret and, more than reality, the nature even of its language.
Selective bibliography
- Leon Gischia and Lucien Mazenod, Primitive arts French , Paris, Arts and Trades Graphic, 1938.
- Leon Gischia and Nicole Védrès, sculpture in France since Rodin , Paris, Editions of the Threshold, 1945.
- Leon Gischia and Bernard Champigneulle, sculpture in France, of prehistory at the end of the Middle Ages , Audin Editions, 1950.
On Gischia
- Helene Parmelin, Painters of Jean Vilar: Calder, Chastel, Gischia, Jacno, Lagrange, Manessier, Pinion, Prassinos and Singier , Foundation Jean Vilar, Avignon, 1984.
- Leon Gischia , Paris, Paris Art Center, 1985.
- Jean Lescure, Gischia or reasons of the color , with two drawings and the portrait of the author by Gischia, the portrait of Gischia by Pinion, Paris, Editions of Orycte, 1987.
- Pierre Francastel and Jean Lescure, Gischia , Zagreb, Globus and Paris, Paris Art Center, 1988.
- Lydia Harambourg, Leon Gischia , in the School of Paris 1945-1965, Dictionary of the painters , Neuchâtel, Ides and Calendes, 1993 (ISBN 2825800481).
- Ante Giblota, Gischia , three volumes, (in French and Italian), Rome/Turin, ED. Seat, 1995
- Jean Lescure, Leon Gischia, Sketchbook, Of a intention of drawings to the intentions of the drawing , 21 drawings of Gischia, Marchainville, Editions Proverb, 2000.
Internal bond
External bonds
- Collection of the National museum of modern art Centers Georges-Pompidou (to seek: Gischia)
- Photographs of the Meeting of the national museums:
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