907:, in which he published more than two hundred articles over ten years including "The 'Avanced' advance into the void", "We must discourage fine art", "The imitation of nature is the only desire in the plastic arts", "The 'golden number' is in nature", "Art has deserted France", "Rules on the harmony of colours and volumes", "The love of art is a bastion against the robot", "We must support art education", "Rules are necessary", "Against publicity", "Speculations on the fine arts", "Nature or nothing", "Refutation of Cubism", "The commercial genius", and so on. He set forth his position toward non-figurative art, explored its origins (which he considered fallacious), and highlighted the lack of understandable criteria by which to judge which works are valuable which are not.
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shows a rash and almost confused aspect, offers at a distance an extraordinary force and luminosity. Gard uses pure colour with a dexterity which belongs only to the great colourists, without ever going overboard. He ponders and solves one of the most complex problems of painting: shadows. He said: "For the part of a picture in shadow not to cause the death of a painting, by creating an inert zone, it must be luminous. A shadow must give the impression that it can move and not seem to be fixed to a spot: a shadow must express as much life as light."
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603:(Autumn Gallery) with his portrait of Metman. He received a special award and was proposed as a member. This early success was not repeated and Gard later said ironically: "Was my work so bad, or were these gentlemen of the jury carried away by the wine? Who will ever know? In any case, if they made an error on that day, they corrected it afterwards."
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pure fantasy; in particular the paintings with sharp contrasts (such as flowers). But it didn't matter: Gard, with his eye ready to seize the narrowest shafts of colour, really saw these auras — and this is the role of the great painter, to pay attention to a phenomenon that a less sensitive eye does not always see.
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Gard took notes and wrote comments on art since he was seventeen years old. He gave conferences in Paris in the 1930s. He confessed this was not his gift, so he soon gave it up and started the practice of introducing his exhibition catalogue with a lecture on painting, often a satire against certain
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Three years before his death, he gave the proceeds from his workshop to his son, and wrote to him: "I had hoped that in the life of art that I had, I would meet some true art lover: I gave up this idea because I found only speculators or people who wanted vane family portraits. I concluded that your
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in l'Isle-Adam forest. The castle grounds, with its diverse trees, its ponds and its changing aspects tracking the changing of the seasons, offered to Gard a multitude of subjects. Since he could only make short trips there for a day or two, he chose to make drafts. He tried to seize the effects of
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In the 1950s Gard painted a series of still lives and flowers where he tried to fuse together two of his preoccupations in the same work, which, technically, are not easy to reconcile and from which he turns sometimes to one, sometimes to the other, the two tendencies fighting, one yielding to the
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Starting then, a very particular phenomenon of colour appears in his paintings: Aura. Strangely for a time when one saw so many extravagances, the colourful aura in which Gard bathed the subjects of his paintings received skepticism from the critics, who reproached him for what they thought was a
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pictures of vigorous forms basked in a vibrant and colourful atmosphere, or in nudes with glowing flesh. He used knife-and-plaster for a vigorous and open touch, sometimes broad, sometimes tight, working with harmonies sometimes harsh, sometimes delicate. This painting style, which seen up close
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light, wind, fog, snow, rain, playing in the trees, the meadows, the water or the sky. The light is expressed in prominent fluid brushstrokes, which do not seek to flatter the layman's eye. For the expert, these landscapes are a collection of erudite and delicious harmonies which sing nature.
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agitated, noisy, in an ivory tower, giving itself airs of having the bit between the teeth, of being the safekeeper of authority, but actually destroying only art that nobody, in this majestic enclosure, thinks of defending, always making storms in a teacup or shouting "Fire!", the only real
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of Paris. Gard at an early age started to express his artistic gifts. In 1913, at the age of twelve he drew a self-portrait in charcoal. Two years later he wrote to Louis Metman, the curator of the Museum of
Decorative Arts, who took him under his wing and enrolled him in the
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At the start of the 1970s, he returned to a series of still lives where he expresses the science of reflections in glass, as well as his science which consists in making one can feel how objects differ. He painted his last portraits. In the
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Gard's relatively discreet originality passed almost unnoticed in the thrusting times for art that he lived in. He remained distant from 20th century movements laying claim as the heirs of the impressionists, be it
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From 1932 Gard was definitively established in Paris, and although he had never seen
Mediterranean light, he continued to explore this field in his still lives, his paintings of flowers and his portraits.
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of 1931 stopped these stays and obliged him to take a job in a workshop restoring paintings. He became the owner of the workshop a few years later. He continued to send his work to the
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In the 1960s, he returned to the daily grind, no doubt more out of necessity than by choice. His friend
Sudreau, the Secretary of State, gave him a room in the castle of
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In the arts, momentary practical success is never brought by the assurance of quality but by a tendency to it. One can only sail with the wind if one is in the wind.
734:, where he painted subjects as easy to conceive as they are hard to make: pond life, tricks of the light, the wind on leaves and sky, the changing seasons, etc.
900:: "On Still-Life", "Forms and the plurality of exactness in painting", "Gauguin's Heritage", "Backbones won't swallow", "'Gérôme', or 'the blunder of an era'".
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When he left school "by the
Bonaparte route" (that is, by failing), he signed a contract with an art dealer named Chéron who counted among his protéges
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In 1922, he entered the
National School of Art in Paris (headed by Ernest Laurent), but he clashed with his professors and the school's atmosphere:
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This work as writer and art restorer slowed down his painting work and his exhibitions at the Castet gallery, but it did not stop them completely.
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In his workshop on Rue
Bourdonnais, where customers became increasingly rare, he continued to write all that he still had to say on art and life.
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styles came to the fore, Gard stayed away from theory and, it seems, followed Corot's lessons when he installed his easel on street corners in
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Manet was not in fashion yesterday, and he wouldn't be today: too much daring for his time, not enough for ours. It is just a big picture.
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Through history, we sometimes see outstanding geniuses. We give them no complications: genius is simple because it is all it needs to be.
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other in turn: the love of a precise contour, the solidness of things, detail; and then the love of fireworks, of explosions of colour.
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Masterpieces do badly in a democracy. It is best that a masterpiece has a shiny face, since the hordes don't look at the back side.
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In art, it's the little nothings that make masterpieces. If Manet's white were less or more pink, it would not be Manet any more.
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Fashion is the opposite of what one has just finished. The dislike of certain errors leads one sometimes to the opposite errors.
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For more than a century the error of painting has been to be cerebral instead of pictorial.
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When Sacha Guitry died in 1957 he lost a friend, an admirer and a significant supporter.
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The 1940s, when Gard met Sacha Guitry, are marked by several portraits of the famous:
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The genius of art is the genius of infinitesimal yet precise values.
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artistic sense is better than that of all these fake collectors."
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In 1943 and 1944, he wrote five articles for the weekly magazine
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and they became friends. Gard painted portraits of the actress
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Gard was seventeen when he exhibited for the first time in the
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and to exhibit in the
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and practiced with a palette of soft and refined tones.
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It was through his work restoring paintings that he met
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In 1960, the French State bought one of his paintings (
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As for his masters, he wanted to recognize only the
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744:He painted only two more paintings, the last one (
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87:but its sources remain unclear because it lacks
628:called "the mistress of the masters": nature.
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871:("Young Man With Coat"), he pays homage to
53:Learn how and when to remove these messages
616:principle of this academy of mediocrities.
238:Learn how and when to remove this message
220:Learn how and when to remove this message
118:Learn how and when to remove this message
16:French painter and art critic (1901–1979)
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903:In 1946 he founded the bi-monthly
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102:more precise citations.
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838:Baroness Hottinguer
577:13th arrondissement
523:, L'Isle-Adam, 1969
521:Épicéas au couchant
512:, L'Isle-Adam, 1968
501:, L'Isle-Adam, 1968
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266:Self-portrait, 1925
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780:Until 1926, when
747:Le Géranium rouge
682:Jeanne Fusier-Gir
652:Tsuguharu Foujita
626:Leonardo da Vinci
559:Gard was born in
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759:Early career
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310:(1979-11-12)
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152:Please help
147:verification
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1006:1979 deaths
1001:1901 births
834:Count Doria
671:Paris Salon
622:Old Masters
555:Early years
327:Nationality
169:"Léon Gard"
100:introducing
980:Categories
960:References
929:Quotations
805:still life
282:1901-01-12
210:April 2023
180:newspapers
108:April 2023
39:improve it
853:Bonhommes
754:Paintings
550:Biography
375:Léon Gard
360:Patron(s)
337:Education
276:Léon Gard
254:Léon Gard
45:talk page
898:Panorama
790:Abstract
573:Normandy
565:Limousin
400:Nu assis
349:Painting
294:Limousin
923:Rivarol
879:Writing
798:Étampes
794:Morigny
782:Fauvism
569:Morigny
194:scholar
96:improve
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891:Salons
873:Titian
786:Cubism
698:Apollo
660:Toulon
379:French
331:French
320:France
298:France
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860:1970s
561:Tulle
316:Paris
290:Tulle
201:JSTOR
187:books
81:, or
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305:Died
272:Born
173:news
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