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French, 20th century, male.

Born 26 June 1909, in Dijon; died 6 December 1996, in Paris.

Painter, collage artist, engraver, draughtsman. Wall decorations, designs for mosaics, stained glass windows, tapestries, stage costumes and sets.

A pupil at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyons in 1930, Bertholle studied in Paris from 1932-1934, and subsequently attended classes run by the painter Roger Bissière at the Académie Ranson, where he met his friends and associates Manessier, Etienne-Martin, Le Moal and Véra Pagava. He was artistic director of the Gien porcelain factory from 1943-1957, and taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1965-1980. He was a member of the Institut de France, a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Initially an admirer of Puvis de Chavannes, whose work he had encountered at the city museum in Lyons, Bertholle later discovered Manet (at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1932), and through the latter, Van Gogh and Renoir. Following his early, highly-coloured Expressionist period, Bertholle was greatly influenced by the Flemish fantasies of Breughel and Heironymus Bosch, and ultimately by the Surrealists - as may be seen in his painting of the ...

(b Montauban, Sept 30, 1894; d Perpignan, July 21, 1972).

French painter, printmaker, stage designer, illustrator and tapestry designer. He was encouraged to study art by Emile-Antoine Bourdelle, to whom he showed his drawings at the age of 16, and was taught by him at the Ecole de Dessin à la Manufacture des Gobelins. From 1912 to 1914 he attended the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Montauban, and after serving in the infantry during World War I he moved to Paris, where he showed his work regularly at such exhibitions as the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne.

Desnoyer lived and worked among the Cubists, but like the Fauves he favoured bright primary colours, marrying colour and line in landscapes, still-lifes and portraits. His debt to both movements is visible in paintings such as La Foire du Trône (1927; Paris, Pompidou). He also produced an illustrated edition of La Fontaine’s Dies Irae (Editions Mortier, 1947) and stage designs for the Opéra Comique in Paris, for example for Henri Barrand’s ...

French, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1749, in Versailles; died 1825, in Paris.

Painter (including gouache), watercolourist, sculptor, draughtsman (wash), engraver, decorative artist. Mythological subjects, allegorical subjects, historical portraits, hunting scenes, interiors with figures, gardens. Stage costumes and sets, furniture, designs for fabrics, frontispieces.

Dugourc's father, who was in the service of the Duke of Orléans, had a considerable fortune. Dugourc was permitted to attend the lessons taken by the Duke of Chartres (the future Philippe-Égalité), and at the age 15 left for Rome, attached to the embassy of the Count of Cani. From his infancy, he had shown an aptitude for drawing, perspective and architecture. However, the death of his mother, followed shortly after by the loss of his father's fortune, changed his life. From being an amateur, Dugourc became a professional artist, and executed paintings, sculptures and engravings. In a work published in ...

(b Budapest, April 17, 1904; d Budapest, Jan 26, 1986).

Hungarian painter, illustrator, mosaicist, tapestry designer, stage designer, poster designer, printmaker, sculptor, teacher and administrator. From 1922 to 1929 he studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (Magyar Kepzőmüvészeti Főiskolá) in Budapest under Gyula Rudnay (1878–1957) and János Vaszary (1867–1939). In the mid-1920s he became acquainted with Béla Uitz’s General Ludd series (1923; Budapest, N.G.) and in Venice he saw the work of such Russian avant-garde artists as Rodchenko and El Lissitzky and such Italian Futurists as Severini. In 1926 in Paris he studied the works of Léger, Braque, Picasso and others in the collection of Léonce Rosenberg. He was also influenced by the art of Brancusi and Joseph Csáky, as well as André Breton’s Manifeste du surréalisme (Paris, 1924). From the outset, Hincz’s work revealed a number of different objectives. Although he experimented with abstraction, the reference to the figure is always present in one form or another. His profound interest in humanity and its social interaction was based on, and motivated by, this interest in the figure. His early paintings are expressionist in mood and are composed of flattened forms in a shallow space in a manner reminiscent of Cubo–Futurist art. Elements of Purism and Surrealism are also present. After World War II he became increasingly preoccupied with realism, political agitprop art and the problems inherent in creating new symbols; a study trip to Korea, China and Vietnam in ...

[Yiannis, Giannis]

(b Arta, April 23, 1916; d Athens, Dec 20, 2009).

Greek painter, printmaker, illustrator, stage designer and decorative artist. From 1931 to 1936 he studied painting and printmaking at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Athens under Konstantinos Parthenis and Yannis Kefallinos (1893–1957). As soon as he graduated he participated in the exhibition of Greek printmakers that was organized in Czechoslovakia in 1936. The same year, on a scholarship from the Academy of Athens, he went to Rome and then to Paris to study at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole des Arts et Métiers. He returned to Athens in 1940, when he participated in the last pre-war panhellenic exhibition, in which he was awarded the first prize. During the period of the German occupation (1941–4) he started painting portraits to earn his living. In these his restricted palette and the opposition of light and shadow with as little half-tone as possible reveal his concern with the flattening of form and space. His post-war canvases are painted with a directness of execution and solidly modelled forms. His concern with the structure of form led him gradually to geometrical compositions. In ...

French, 20th century, male.

Born 29 July 1897, in Paris; died 10 July 1981, in Paris.

Painter (including gouache), watercolourist, draughtsman, engraver, illustrator. Mythological subjects, genre scenes, figures, local figures, portraits, landscapes, waterscapes, still-lifes, flowers. Wall decorations, stage costumes and sets, designs for fabrics, designs for tapestries, furniture...

French, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 27 May 1871, in Paris, France; died 13 February 1958, in Paris.

Painter (gouache), watercolourist, engraver, potter. Religious subjects, figures, landscapes. Stage sets, designs for stained glass, designs for tapestries.

Georges Rouault completed his primary education in 1885 and was apprenticed to stained-glass artists – first the Tamonis, then Hirsch. He received a direct offer from Albert Besnard for stained-glass windows for the School of Pharmacy to be made from his design sketches, but he refused out of loyalty to his employer. He was encouraged to consider painting as a career, having been introduced to the appreciation of art by his grandfather, Alexandre Champdavoine, who, modest white-collar worker though he was, knew and admired Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet, and Édouard Manet. Rouault achieved entry to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1891, first in Elie Delaunay’s studio, then in Gustave Moreau’s (where he met Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, Rudolf Lehmann, Henri Evenepoel, and others). Though he failed twice at the Prix de Rome, he won the Prix Chenavard in 1894 and, by 1900, he had obtained a mention and a bronze medal. In 1903, as Gustave Moreau’s executor, he became the curator of the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris....

[ Prince Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyekale Osuntoki ]

(b Ibadan, May 1944; d Ibadan, June 16, 2011).

Nigerian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and textile designer. In 1964, while working as a dancer for a herbalist, he participated in the Mbari Mbayo Workshop in Oshogbo, producing drawings and prints. After Ulli Beier left Oshogbo, Twins Seven Seven switched to oils as a preferred medium. He drew illustrations for Amos Tutuola’s Palmwine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. In pen and ink drawings, etchings and paintings he created highly patterned representations of Yoruba life, populated by figures both natural and supernatural. A compulsive artist, Twins Seven Seven allowed his pieces to ‘unfold’ as they were created. His compositions are dense with overlapping figures, and every space of the pictorial plane is filled with some decorative or integral detail, as in his Baptist Church of Bush of Ghost (etching, 375 × 305 mm, c. 1969; Oxford, priv. col.). His paintings of the 1970s are covered with a luminous varnish, and it was during this time that he developed a layered style on plywood, a palette of earth tones sprinkled with bright greens and yellows, and a pictorial field in which figures are delineated in dark hues....

Belgian, 20th century, male.

Active from 1919 and naturalised in France from 1947.

Born 11 February 1909, in Warneton (Flanders); died 5 May 1984, in Paris.

Painter (gouache), watercolourist, engraver, illustrator. Stage costumes and sets, murals, designs for mosaics, tapestries, and stained glass windows.

Gustave Singier's childhood was spent in war-torn Belgium under the German occupation. His father was a cabinet-maker and his mother a weaver. He started to paint in 1923, at the age of 14. He studied for three years at the École Boulle before going on to work (until 1936) as an interior architectural draughtsman and furniture designer, while painting in his free time. He met the painter Charles Walch, who encouraged him in his work and opened his eyes to his own potential as an artist painting from nature. He taught at the Académie Ranson in Paris from 1951 to 1954, then at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1967 to 1978....

French, 20th century, male.

Born 28 April 1893, in St-Cyr-au-Mont-d'Or (Rhône); died 20 July 1974, in Paris.

Painter, watercolourist, engraver, draughtsman, illustrator, designer. Portraits, figures, nudes, landscapes, flowers. Stage costumes and sets, designs for fabrics.

Louis Touchagues studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyons, where he received several awards and a travel bursary. In Paris in 1922 he worked as an assistant architect and fabric designer. Touchagues soon came to the attention of the couturier Paul Poiret, a patron of modern art and great discoverer of new talent, who quickly gave him the opportunity to exploit his talents more fully. Free from more menial tasks, Touchagues met the actor and director Charles Dullin, who was also from Lyons, and joined him as assistant set designer. He was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 1948....