Project Description
Lithography
Image size : 37 cm x 55 cm
overall dimensions : 50 cm x 65 cm
publishing print : 120 ex
Year 1955
Signed lower right : Lapicque
Annotated lower left : H.C. (off trade)
Supplied under glass with aluminum frame
Dock in Venice
Charles Lapicque
(Born in 1898 in Theize (near Lyons) – 1988), is both a scientist and an artist.
Of his childhood, he will retain the passion for animals transmitted by his veterinarian grandfather but also the passion for the sea born during his summer holidays in Brittany. From the age of five, he begins the piano and shows a deep interest in music that he will keep in adulthood. He continued his secondary studies in Paris. After obtaining his baccalaureate, he joined the army and took part in the First World War.
He entered the Central School in 1919.
In 1921, installation with his wife in Normandy where he is in charge of building the electrical distribution network of the Lisieux sector (electric power distribution specialist). During this period, he realizes his first works. He decides to devote himself solely to painting from 1928 thanks to the support of gallery owner Jeanne Bucher.
1930
With the crisis of the years 1930, he is forced to find a job. He joined the faculty of science and prepared a doctoral thesis on “The optics of the eye and the vision of contours” (thesis defended in 1938). His scientific discoveries in the field of color will lead him to innovate through a new distribution of colors in his works. (it overturns the law of color grading accepted since Leonardo da Vinci).
1939
In 1939, he is mobilized within the CNRS : he is responsible for studying night vision and camouflage (night flights with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry). After these experiences, Lapicque represents in these nocturnal landscapes, luminous points and their starry aspects. After his demobilization in 1940, he affirms his patriotism in his works where the colors of the French flag appear. In 1941, he participates in the exhibition of "Young painters of French tradition" of which he is the leader.
Navy Painter
In 1948, he is named "Painter of the Navy" (until 1966). receiving in 1953 the Raoul Dufy Prize at the Venice Biennale, he performs between 1953 and 1955 four city breaks. Lapicque subsequently traveled, who will each be at the origin of new series of paintings : in Rome in 1957, in Greece in 1963, in Spain in 1973, in Holland in 1974, in France itself, in Vezelay in 1975, in the castles of the Loire in 1976.
From 1967, the National Museum of Modern Art devotes a retrospective to him. In 1979, he receives the Grand Prix national de la peinture. Charles Lapicque dies in 1988.
This talented self-taught artist, has always been out of step with his contemporaries, oscillating between abstraction and figuration (hence the title “Lapicque le disturbeur” used by the critic François Pluchart in “L’Art vivant” in 1984). Charles Lapicque does not belong to any artistic current but influenced many of his contemporaries.
Paintings by Lapicque are present in the collections of many museums, especially in France (Paris, Dijon, Besancon, PEZZILLO Jérôme Interior at the deckchair, Nantes), and Europe (Brussels, Copenhagen, Essen, Munich, Stuttgart) and in America (New-York, Ottawa, Toronto).