Pierre Graille

Pierre Graille is a santonnier, Sculpteur, Faïencier of the area of Provence-Alp-Coast of Azure.

Biography

Born at the beginning of the 20th century with Grambois, Pierre Graille “fell” into passion from modelling towards 6-7 years, whereas he attended the patronage of the district of Saint-Anthony with Marseilles.

“My Master was the abbot Sumien, old man cleaned of Notre-Dame Limite and it is in exchange to serve the Mass that it initiated me with art to give the life to the ground” ( Pierre Graille Interview 2006). It carried out its first santon in 1927

Semi-official portraitist of the administration of the Stations, Pierre Graille, postmaster “in the civilian”, modelled during years the successive Ministers for the “Station Telegraph and Telephone”.

Work against the watch

“Each time a new minister was named” specifies it, “I was destined for Paris by my administration and I carried out the clay portrait of the minister to make a santon of it. But it happened that I had not finished the santon when the minister was already replaced!! ”

Pierre Graille left to the retirement in 1975. One of these works, the crib of the parish church of Notre-Dame de Beauvoir perdure and enriched with the passing of years by let us santons itself crunched on the sharp one among the inhabitants of the commune of Grambois. One discovers there: the baker, the mayor, the factor (of course), but also of other alive characters or having lived at the village.

Every year the crib of Grambois reappears in the days which precede Christmas, in the church Notre-Dame de Beauvoir, and the “ground children” of Pierre Graille recreate, for a time, the magic of the crib of Provence.

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