Overview

A painter of the French Art de Vivre Born in 1958, Guy de Malherbe lives and works between Paris and his studio in Poncé-sur-Loir, Sarthe. His work is part of national collections (CNAP, Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and has already been the subject of several solo exhibitions at the museums of Le Mans, Évreux, Trouville, the Abbaye de l'Épau and the Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. His paintings reflect both his personal universe and a range of pictorial references. His still-lifes are often inspired by memories of shared, convivial moments. With great humor, they combine gastronomy and painting to maliciously illustrate a French art de vivre. Witness to happiness as well as the ephemeral, they are a philosophical reminder of the brevity of life. At the same time, his still-lifes are also an exploration of an artistic heritage: the oyster self-portraits are sometimes pop in the manner of Andy Warhol, sometimes classical in the tradition of Jean Siméon Chardin, sometimes almost surreal, recalling the enigmatic landscapes of Giorgio de Chirico. These pictorial allusions are complemented by a play on self-reference: oysters, shores and rocks are part of a series of paintings that respond to each other over the years. Likewise, his landscapes, veritable odes to Normandy in Houlgate, Étretat and Varengeville, reveal a series of artistic heritages and filiations. In some, rocks, crevasses, cracks and other telluric elements, in an almost Fauvist palette, invite imaginative fantasies. In others, the strange sandy expanses recall the landscapes of Dalí, Eugène Boudin or Courbet, with their dramatic effects of light on water.

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9782370742643

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Cyrille Sciamma is director of the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny. Pierre Wat is a French art historian, art critic and university professor.

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