Pierre Lesieur

Pierre Lesieur is a French painter born the May 21st 1922 in Paris.

Biography

His/her father died in 1928, Pierre Lesieur grows in the medium of the upper middle class of businesses. As of childhood, at twelve years, it draws and paints each week near his maternal grandmother, then during her holidays with Beg-Meil, in Brittany. At the end of her secondary studies, his/her mother approves her desire to devote herself to painting and, in October 1940, it enters to the École of the Art schools, which it leaves at the end of a few weeks. It follows some time the courses of André Lhote then attends a free workshop of Montparnasse and, during three years, the Academy Montmartre, boulevard of Clichy.

Pierre Lesieur carries out a first exposure to Paris in 1952. The Baron Mollet, to which it offers hospitality durably (during thirty years, writing Claude Roy), makes him meet the director of the new Coard gallery which will expose its paintings regularly. In 1958 Lesieur carries out with his wife the actress Michelle Marquais a long voyage in Far East which will have a great repercussion in its work.

The same year Pierre Lesieur receives the Price of Criticism and, working between Paris and Saint-Rémy-of-Provence, carries out thereafter about thirty personal exposures to Paris but also to Tokyo, New York and London.

Work

Initially very coloured in the line of Matisse and Bonnard, the painting of Pierre Lesieur develops with the length of the Années 1950 on the very purified surfaces which touch towards 1960 with nonthe figuration, then return from there to an allusive figuration.

From the Années 1970 Lesieur realizes, often in very large sizes, many portraits of his wife, the actress Michelle Marquais, but also the naked ones, or lengthened upright. Around these figures, the universe of the Intérieurs of Lesieur is characterized by the presence luminous of the objects of the daily newspaper, settees and cushions (on which rests the Utopia cat), chairs, armchairs and pedestal tables, windows and libraries, bottles, jugs or carafes, glasses, plates, fruit dishes or teapots, lamps and mirrors. Many paintings of Lesieur approach the topics close to the Fenêtres open over the night and to the Toiles in the workshop .

More rarely landscape designer, Lesieur also painted, in the memory transposed of his voyages, the houses of the Yemen, architectures of Istanbul, the buildings of New York, the walls of Tabriz or the frontages of Jaipur.

Judgment

“The white is made of all the colors. The art of Pierre Lesieur is them to do all of them to leave. ”

Jean Lescure ( Pierre Lesieur , Acatos, Sheep, Switzerland, 2003, p. 142)

Museums

Museum of Modern art, Paris; Museum of Modern art, Luxembourg, Museum of modern art, Grenoble, Nelson Gallery off Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Brooklyn Museum, New York; University off Kansas, Art Lawrence Museum, Kansas; Subway museum, New York; Museum of Hiroshima, Japan; Kasama Nichido Museum off art, Japan

Sources

Claude Roy, Lesieur , Editions Rings Art, Paris, 1992, 200 p.

Selective bibliography

Yvan Bettex, Pierre Lesieur , Pierre Editions To curdle, Geneva, 1960.
Roger van Gindertael, Pierre Lesieur , Coard Gallery, Paris, 1963.
Jean Lescure, Pierre Lesieur , Coard Gallery, Paris, 1968.
Claude Roy, Pierre Lesieur , Coard Gallery, Paris, 1986, 158 p.
Georges Borgeaud, Pierre Lesieur , Bellefontaine Gallery, Lausanne, 1987.
Claude Roy, Lesieur , Editions Ring Art, Paris, 1992, 200 p.
Lydia Harambourg, the School of Paris, 1945-1965, Dictionary of the painters , Ides and Calendes, Neuchâtel, 1993.
François Hauter, Pierre Lesieur , Micolon, Charlieu, 1998, 176 p.
Pierre Lesieur , texts of Lydia Harambourg, Goichi Matsunaga, Claude Roy, Jean-Marie Dunoyer and Jean Lescure, Acatos, Sheep (Swiss), 2003, 144 p.
Pierre Lesieur, a life of painter , Berès Gallery, Paris, 2005.

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