Olivier Fleury-Yvet

Olivier Fleury-Yvet (1954 - 2006) is a painter French which especially worked in the area of Paimpol in the Coast-with Armor in Brittany.

Course

Olivier Fleury-Yvet was born in 1954 with Holy-Addresses close to the Havre. An area which inspired by the artists like Eugene Boudin, Claude Monet, Georges Braque, Othon Friesz or Raoul Dufy. He acknowledges nevertheless not to have attended painters during his jeunesse.
Son father is journalist with the Free Havre and his/her mother housewife raises to them five children.

During his childhood, Olivier Fleury-Yvet draws on the walls of his room to chalk and the pencil. They are initially characters real size. Gestural physics is already privileged. But the color will come only later. It gives up the studies after the class of third and works like apprentice draftsman in an architect of the name of Wielfried Backer.
This time, it has friends with the Art schools and attends some courses of the soir.
Il also passes its heavy-goods vehicle licenses and finds a work with the port of Le Havre.

Attracted by the Loire ch4ateau, it leaves its area to go to Blois. He works like bricklayer's mate. It learns work there from the stone. It draws the castle with the Indian ink and sells its works with the terrace of the coffees. Already at that time, it wants great to become painter. One day, it decides to go to collect itself on the tomb of Paul Gauguin with the Marquesas Islands. It initially goes to the Guadeloupe in order to find a boat there but a waste of time and effort, it must return to France.

It unloads with the Ile de Ré, settles during ten years and opens a gallery-workshop there: the Two cats . “I managed all alone explained it. I bought fabric with the meter, fabric which I hung on the walls. I said myself: he who can do more can do less. Really, I learned painting with sweat. One did not have especially to be let cut down. ”

It is only later that Olivier Fleury-Yvet decides to come towards Paimpol in the Coast-with Armor. He knows the area to have spent the holidays there when he was child.

He settles initially with Tréméven, a small village in the grounds with a few kilometers of the coast, where he paints and exposes. He paints in particular the vault Saint-Jacob de Tréméven. A few years later, it arrives at Paimpol, street of the church. It is there that it will expose its work during some time before settling definitively with Ploubazlanec very close to the sea. Today, its fabrics are present in many particular collections in France, Ireland or in England.

Olivier Fleury-Yvet lived only for his painting and its contemporaries have it without any doubt included/understood too late. Thus have-you it decided to put an end to its days on June 14th, 2006.

A solid base

Olivier Fleury-Yvet was a painter builder. Autodidact, it nourished all his life of the experiment of old to find a true style: lines purified in died natures, vigorous keys to build the human figures. With final, it carried out a powerful and expressive painting.

If Olivier Fleury-Yvet appeared so strange, if enigmatic with the first access, it is that its glance was turned towards the interior. In the light of its own history and of that of painting, he wanted to attend the spectacle of creation. Under its robust and vigorous appearance it hid in truth a great sensitivity. The artist was indeed fascinated by the experiment of painting and it was given thoroughly for it.

The artist was before a whole builder. He knew that a beautiful frontage could not exist a long time without well built foundations. Also the painting of Fleury-Yvet rested it on a solid base. It left us a nourished erudite painting of the experiment of old.

Its library contained many worn books: “it is my work tools” explained it.
Un work had for him a very particular importance, Art of the color , a book of Johannes Itten, professor with the Bauhaus of Weimar between 1919 and 1923. It was for him a mine of very invaluable information on the behavior of the color in a table, a true handbook of the painter.

An erudite painting

Its library had started to be built whereas it was thirteen years old. At that time his/her mother offered a book of the collection to him All work painted , that devoted to Michel-Angel, then in the same series Piero della Francesca, Van Gogh, Picasso etc It is through these books (with the reproductions however more than approximate of original works) that will be born a true fascination for painting.

Then they are the long years of training in Autodidacte. With new readings: max Ernst, Edvard Munch, the German expressionnists , Kokoschka, Soutine etc.
Gradually the painter will be detached from these readings to trace its own way and to find a true style. The natures died in the purified lines, impressed strong characters of a great sensitivity, with the image of the painter who created them. “I seek only painting”, explained it.

Here, there were no sterile speeches, most important for him it was: the form, the movement, the color. “Me, I paint to survive” liked it to repeat. “I wanted to be a painter. I did not have the facilities at the beginning. ”

A committed painting

“Painting is learned with a good amount from perspiration. Each blow of brush must be charged. Each key must have its own life, its own intensity. ” he said.
Cela asked him many passages, many mélanges.
“After it is the mystery! A chemical reaction! The color vibrates! And more there is trade, more one types just. It is not by looking at the fabric only it is done. ” he added.

He thought humbly that modernity was inside its travail.
“I will certainly not piss in my pigments to make young person. Modernity must be in the line, the color, the glance, the force. ”

He did not want to in no case to make clean slate of the lessons of the Masters. He considered too important painting to put a red nose or to go up on a estrade.

“My painting is committed. I try to build. I want to be a builder. I endeavor to go towards the beautiful one. If we live one time which does not know any more where it goes, all does not pass by television, universalization or Internet. ”
Il wanted to be political painter registered in the city with its travail.
“the worker still has his importance today and that in spite of the speed of the media, we will remain always men…”

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