Trees Along the Bièvre
Oil on canvas in which thick flat areas of color overlap, promoting the coexistence of the nature elements. To the blue and green shades is added the brown of the tree trunks and of the church. It creates rhythm in the composition, and leads our gaze from the path in the foreground, towards the distant village.
Circa 1923-24
Signed bottom right: « A. Dunoyer de Segonzac »
Dimensions :
The painting: Height: 25 ¾ in. Width: 32 in.
Framed: Height: 35 ½ in. Width: 42 ½ in.
Commentaire :
Through drawing, painting, engraving and watercolor, he gave birth to a work crossing 75 years of creation. His technique is embodied by a free gesture, away from any convention. His taste for freedom and for body movements is recognizable through the drawings and the sets he created for Diaghilevs’ Russians Ballets. Already known as a respected artist when alive, he used to go around with celebrities like painters as Paul Signac, Raoul Dufy, André Derain, the fashion designer Paul Poiret, the writers Paul Valéry and Émile Verhaeren. It’s Signac who invites him, from 1908, to discover the Midi, and Saint-Tropez. Enthusiastic, the artist is going to compose still lives, landscapes, portraits, diversifying his palette and his textures, looking for the shade which will reanimate the harmony, and the light effect which will contribute to create a special atmosphere. His brushstroke, his line, give life to his shapes, and the composition vibrates. Sincerity and simple pleasures of the everyday life, are leading the man and the artist, who are one. At the end of his life, he is considered as “one of the most important personality of the contemporary art” (Jean Melas Kyriazi, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, sa vie, son œuvre, Harmonies et Couleurs, Lausanne, 1976, p.11).
Bibliography :
Michel CHARZAT, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, La force de la nature, l’amour de la vie, Éditions Gourcuff Gradenigo, Montreuil, 2021, p.95.
