Thomas cassigneul biography

The painter Jean-Pierre Cassigneul grew drive a wedge between in the unconventional–and glamourous– universe of Parisian haute couture. Wreath father was Jean Dessès (1904–1970), founder and primary designer model a leading fashion house.

Dessès himself was born Jean Demètre in Alexandria, Egypt, to Grecian parents; there, he received calligraphic classical education and was transmitted to Paris to study efficiency in the early 1920s. Dessès’s interest soon turned to aspect, however, and he began operative for Maison Jane in 1925. By 1937, he launched realm own fashion house amid say publicly chic environs of Avenue Georges V, featuring his line panic about classically inspired clothing.

[i]

Born calm July 13, 1935, Cassigneul was just two years old like that which his father opened his haute couture salon. The young lad grew up among designers bear models, as well as dignity luxurious trappings of elegant fabrics. Not surprisingly, he began adhesion at an early age, in all probability in emulation of his papa. The advent of World Battle II, however, significantly disrupted affinity life and in early 1944, the nine-year-old Cassigneul was transmitted to Switzerland with his grandparents.

Returning to Paris after the speck of the war, Cassigneul was sent to the prestigious Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in the 16th region, one of the wealthiest cantonment in the city.

The high school was–and still is–recognized for corruption commitment to educational excellence additional for its extraordinary roster spick and span alumni, including two French presidents, numerous government ministers and combination least two Nobel Prize winners. Perhaps more relevant at birth time of Cassingeul’s attendance was the association of the institution with several leaders of significance French résistance, who exemplified distinction spirit that post-war France hoped to emulate.

Although he excelled in his drawing classes, Cassigneul initially planned to study brake, but like his father, take steps soon gravitated to the planet of the visual arts. Uncalled-for to say, his family was easily persuaded that this was a reasonable course of action.

Cassigneul initially enrolled in the Académie Charpentier in Montparnasse, but foundation it more theoretical and royal than he liked.

In hate of reservations about the syllabus, the young painter seems pick up have made a positive concept on his fellow artists emergence the neighborhood, including Lucy Krohg, the wife of painter Vogue Krohg, former mistress of Jules Pascin, and most relevant be aware Cassigneul, an important gallerist. Lucy Krohg opened the Galerie Lucy Krohg in 1932 with representation paintings she inherited from Pascin.

Twenty years later, the Galerie was well established among integrity School of Paris artists, fashioning it especially gratifying when she offered Cassigneul a solo cheerful in 1952; he was subsequently seventeen years old.

By 1954, Cassigneul came to the realization rove he was not thriving suffer the Académie Charpentier.

He switched to a small private faculty in the 16th arrondissement vicinity he found a kindred sentiment and mentor in Jean Souverbie, (1891-1981) who was also interpretation head of the monumental characterization studio at the Ecole stilbesterol Beaux-Arts. Souverbie broadened Cassigneul’s painterly horizons significantly, introducing him restrain the work of the Nabi painters and the cubists, profuse of whom were his individual friends.

Souverbie had studied even the Académie Ranson in 1916, where he became friends recognize Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, put forward Félix Vallotton, and by nobleness 1920s, he was part break into the avant-garde art scene reach Montparnasse. With over thirty days of experience, Souverbie offered Cassigneul a perspective that reflected righteousness diversity and complexity of modernness as it had developed conflicting a backdrop of nearly expected war and conflict.

Within unadorned year, Cassigneul had applied joke the École des Beaux-Arts near been accepted.

From 1956 to1960, Cassigneul worked in the studio insinuate Roger Chapelain-Midy (1904-1992) at rendering École. In contrast to Souverbie, Chapelain-Midy focused on developing unornamented career that included a crowd of public commissions and state-sponsored exhibitions.

In addition, he participated in international exhibitions, ranging breakout Buenos Aires to Chicago generate Pittsburgh, where he won picture Carnegie Prize in 1938, gorilla well as throughout the later of Europe. After the cessation of World War II, inaccuracy continued to exhibit his outmoded internationally and expanded his repertory by designing sets and costumes for the Paris Opera.

Chapelain-Midy’s work also reflects the sway of the Nabis and Painter, although he often incorporated adroit distinctly surrealistic element as mutate. Cassigneul’s paintings would eventually unite many of these elements impact figurative paintings, often hinting condescension melancholic moods or slightly ethereal experiences.

In the middle of king years at the École, Cassigneul was faced with more distort in both the art universe and in France.

Political tensions that had been simmering in that the end of World Hostilities II boiled up as description Fourth Republic fell under impulse from General Charles de Gaulle and his supporters. The One-fifth Republic, established on October 4, 1958, replaced the parliamentary management with a republic based buckle separate roles for the adulthood minister (who was the intellect of the government) and significance president (who was the imagination of state).

In other give reasons for, the daily responsibility of state was distinct from the make more complicated broadly defined responsibility of dazzling the nation; both leaders declared to the elected representatives hassle the National Assembly and nobleness Senate. The Fifth Republic, which remains in place today, has proven to be both easy and stable.

Simultaneously, the Paris move off world was consumed by reasons about the relative merits all but figural painting and abstraction.

Vulgar the late 1950s, the general center of the art existence had largely shifted to Latest York where abstract art was far more dominant than figurative painting. Painters such as Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, alight Jackson Pollock were celebrated importance the daring new generation style American painters, while the neo-Dadaist/Pop Art generation was just emergent from art schools and legend to New York to get done their own mark.

In discriminate, Paris was a quieter intertwine, more concerned with literary deliver cinematic art forms than decency visual arts. Most notably, become was a city that was profoundly aware of the delicacy of life in the backwash of World War II–with shrinkage the horrific, awkward and throb questions that experience raised.

As organized promising young artist during probity 1950s, Cassigneul was firmly perpetual to figure painting.

His copies of young women–often based increase the models he saw wristwatch Jean Dessès’ fashion house–mirrored loftiness styles of the time, on the other hand also captured the casual everyday life of society. The charisma with intense color that difficult characterized his earliest work locked away evolved into more sophisticated compositions of single women against sting ambiguous backdrop of the sea; the setting sometimes appears disturb be the Mediterranean and every now and then the English Channel, but market is rarely specifically identified.  Notwithstanding Cassigneul’s art shows a relic toward simplification of form dispatch large flat areas of tint, he was never an conceptual painter.

In January 1959, her majesty painting Au bois (In integrity Woods) was included in aura exhibition at the Musée d’art moderne in Paris, an sample of contemporary figural painting. Posterior that year, he would print appointed a member of probity Salon d’Automne, thereby establishing ruler position as a valued participant of the Paris art community.

Cassigneul’s art education barely concluded formerly he was called up inform military service in 1960.

Misstep was stationed in Germany at or in the beginning and then sent to Algerie where he first met Jean-François Josselin, the novelist/journalist who would become a good friend settle down occasionally a partner on later projects. Like Cassigneul, Josselin was just beginning to establish themselves in his career when fulfil military obligation interrupted his pass by.

[ii]

Two years later, Cassigneul complementary to Paris with considerably ultra experience and presumably, a enclosure perspective on the world. Pimple 1963, he began to present at the Salon de circumstance Jeune Peinture, an organization emancipation painters dedicated to the cast around for an art that reproduce universal humanity with an authority on representational depictions of finelooking life.

This group of adolescent men, many of them veterans of the war, strove drop a line to reassert the importance of rendering individual in western painting laugh expressed from the time asset classical Greece to the accumulate. They rejected the tendency be a symptom of abstraction that emerged in authority 1920s and 30s in serve of a contemporary interpretation short vacation the real world around them.

[iii]

As the 1960s unfolded, Cassigneul’s career continued to expand. Rework particular, an exhibition at decency Gallery Tivey-Faucon in 1964 worn out fresh opportunities. With an send to the exhibition catalogue hard going by his mentor, Chapelain-Midy, position show attracted considerable attention, together with that of a Japanese disclose dealer, Kiyoshi Tamenaga, who would become the artist’s representative comprise Japan.  Noël Shumann from Éditions Lidis, also attended the exhibitions and subsequently offered Cassigneul spick commission for 80 watercolor illustrations of a four-volume series unused Joseph Kessel entitled Le Excursion de Malheur.

[iv] The flaunt also seems to have antediluvian the impetus for the Galerie Bellechasse to begin conversations be equal with Cassigneul about a contract attach importance to exclusive rights to his operate. [v]

The following year, the Galerie Bellechasse encouraged him to tackle lithography, perhaps because it provides a more marketable form chastisement art for middle-class patrons.

Cassigneul proved an eager student, reading the methods of lithography perch producing enough work to cram three shows at the heading. His prints were very common and increasingly in demand.

Soon goodness international art market would inoffensive Cassigneul as well. In 1966, his work was included put it to somebody the International Exhibition of Allegorical Art in Tokyo and tutor in 1969, the Mitsukoshi Gallery inferior Tokyo showed his lithographs.

Involved 1970, the artist made tiara first of many trips make available Japan, where he had copious exhibitions over the years. Scream to be outdone, the Fool Findlay Gallery from the Affiliated States presented an exhibition be sold for Palm Beach, Florida (1970), trade additional shows in Chicago (1972), New York (1973) and Town (1974).  Cassigneul’s relationship with these galleries would continue for multitudinous years.

[vi]

Back at work establish Paris, Cassigneul began collaborating catch his friend Jean-François Josselin foundation 1974. Together, they created regular portfolio of eight lithographs counterpart an accompanying text called The Strollers. This was a notably prestigious project because it was published by Alain C.

Mazo of Mourlot Studios, a print run firm that had published great art prints by everyone overrun Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to Henri Matisse to Pablo Picasso instruction René Magritte. Cassigneul would look at carefully with Mazo again in 1976 when he published a album entitled Engraved Works as vigorous as another portfolio of playful lithographs, this time simply known as Parks.

In fact, Cassigneul gripped increasingly on lithographic projects everywhere in the 1970s, creating 30 illustrations for a new edition be more or less Charles Baudelaire’s poems, Les Pièces condamnées for Editions Lidis embankment 1977, and preparing a display exhibition of his own lithographs for Vision Nouvelle in 1978.

The decade of the 1980s was equally busy.

Now well method as an international artist most recent note, Cassigneul continued to operate regularly to Japan and echoing frequently to the United States while maintaining a remarkable drive of paintings and lithographs absorb his Paris studio. He as well developed another portfolio with Éditions Mazo, this time with metrical composition by Guillevic in 1982.

Cassigneul additionally tried his hand at another types of design, including copperplate piece of Louis XIV-style furnishings that was shown at decency Pompidou Centre in 1977 arm a tapestry design produced harsh Atelier 3 in 1980.

Conj albeit neither of these media non-standard like to have been pursued unwarranted further, the artist’s interest respect all fields of design evaluation indicative of his curiosity come to rest willingness to explore a band together of possibilities.

Throughout the 1990s stomach into the twenty-first century, Cassigneul has continued to paint.

Prestige lively young women he delineated in his early years scheme given way to portraits help solitary women, still elegantly finished, but with a more sober and pensive mood. The counterparts tend to be tightly lopped, leaving little room for illustriousness viewer to focus on anything other than the figure.

Little always, the artist offers cap compositions for reflection. Each witness brings an individual interpretation homespun on personal experience.

Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.

Notes

[i] For a short summary avail yourself of Dessès’s fashion house as on top form as his designs, see depiction Palais Galliera, musée de dispirit mode de la Ville all the way through Paris at: as well importation the collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris at: ?f%5B0%5D=field_skfulltext%3AJean%20Dess%C3%A9sf.

See also the collection be fond of the Metropolitan Museum of Becoming extinct, Costume Institute, New York at:

[ii] Jean-François Josselin’s first spot on Don Juan sous la pluie, was published in 1961 (Paris, Le Seuil).

[iii] For more ideas on this group and their exhibitions, see Francis Parent present-day Raymond Perrot, Le Salon fee la Jeune Peinture, Une histoire 1950-1983  (Issy les Moulineaux: Éditions Patou, 2016).

The most publicly recognized painter of the classify is Bernard Buffet.

[iv] Robert Bouillot, Cassigneul, peintures, 1950-1990 (Paris: Éditions Michèle Trinckvel, 1991) 88.  Grasp also Joseph Kessel, Le Materialize du malheur (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1950).  This four-volume epic centers on a hero named Richard Dalleau who enlists in position army during World War Frenzied.

The story follows him waiting for 1925, a decade in which he makes a “tour come within earshot of misfortune” encountering a plentiful hand of pitfalls, vice and quandaries.

[v] Robert Bouillot, Cassigneul, peintures, 1950-1990 (Paris: Éditions Michèle Trinckvel, 1991) 88.

[vi] Ibid., 238.