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French, 20th century, male.

Born 1904, in Paris; died 27 August 1967, in Perros-Guirec (Côtes-d'Armor).

Sculptor (including bronze), engraver (burin). Monuments, designs for tapestries, stage costumes and sets.

Henri Adam's father, a goldsmith and jeweller, taught him the rudiments of the trade while he was studying at the Collège Lavoisier. He also took classes in drawing, first at the École Germain-Pillon and subsequently at the Atelier de la Ville de Paris in Montparnasse, before moving to the École des Beaux-Arts. He exhibited various paintings between ...

German, 20th century, male.

Active in France from 1960.

Born 1934, in Bad Bellingen.

Painter (including gouache), performance artist, watercolourist, engraver (etching), monotype artist, draughtsman. Stage sets, artists' books, posters.

Hermann Amann is very active. He has published written works and given numerous lectures on painting. As a painter, he produces very colourful, very musical works, with a dynamic rhythm, made up of geometric figures in thick lines or black rings, biomorphic forms and graphic signs. He also produces engravings (etchings and monotypes), artists' books ( ...

(b Madrid, Feb 26, 1937).

Spanish painter, sculptor, potter, printmaker and stage designer . As a painter he was mainly self-taught. After working as a journalist in 1957, he left Spain in 1958 to avoid military service, settling in Paris. There he continued to work both as a journalist and painter. From 1968 to 1972 he lived in Milan, returning to Paris in 1973. His work developed from expressionism to realism (Nueva figurina), which reflected on the pictorial language and function of painting and the artist’s role in society. He manipulated ready-made images, words and elements derived from commercial art and the work of other painters. His pieces formed series whose titles referred to the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and the contemporary political situation to help make their critical point. His work frequently provoked controversy, for example his series Arcole Bridge and St Bernard’s Pass (1962–6) was based on the theme of Napoleon Bonaparte as a symbol of imperialism (e.g. ...

(b London, Feb 20, 1921; d London, Nov 16, 1975).

English sculptor, painter, printmaker and writer . He left school at 14 to begin his painting career. After spending time in France, Ayrton returned to England in 1939, finding success in stage design and art criticism. His writings in The Spectator (1946–8) were important in the acceptance of Neo-Romanticism. From 1946 he travelled widely in Italy, admiring the Quattrocento painters, especially Piero della Francesca. At Cumae he began the preoccupation with Greek mythology that continued throughout his life; he visited Greece regularly from 1957. After 1955 sculptures became his preferred medium, although drawing remained essential and he produced etchings and lithographs. However, his many bronzes of the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus (e.g. Icarus III, 1960; London, Old Change Court) remain his best-known images. The Arkville Maze (1968), built of brick and masonry, contains two lifesize bronze sculptures and still stands in the estate of Armand Erpf in the Catskill Mountains, New York (see Hopkins, p. 402)....

(b Burgas, Nov 8, 1924).

Bulgarian painter, printmaker and stage designer . In 1949 he graduated from the National Academy of Arts (Natsionalna Hudozhestvena Academia) in Sofia, having studied painting under Dechko Uzunov. In the early part of his career he made prints and did stage designs, but in the late 1950s he began to focus exclusively on painting. Although he depicted both industrial and urban landscapes (e.g. Industrial Landscape, 1979; Sofia, N.A.G.), he became better known as a painter of seascapes. His compositions are extremely tactile and consist of highly coloured planes and contrasting tones, tending towards abstraction and expressive drama. Seascapes are usually painted in intense hues of ultramarine and cobalt blue, forced together to create a sense of movement. Among his most popular marine paintings are Fishermen (1963) and Seaport (1969; both Sofia, N.A.G.) and Old Boats (1978; Sofia, City A.G.). After 1983 new philosophical tendencies appear in his paintings, although his seascapes continue to be his most expressive works....

(b Budapest, Oct 14, 1914; d Budapest, May 3, 1986).

Hungarian painter, printmaker, critic and stage designer . He studied at the School of Applied Art, Budapest (1930–34). Bálint went to Paris for a short time and then attended János Vaszary and Vilmos Aba-Novák’s private school in Budapest, where he met his future brother-in-law Lajos Vajda, whose Constructivist–Surrealist style had a great influence on him. They spent their summers together at the Szentendre colony. Béla Czóbel’s lyrical expressive paintings also influenced Bálint’s early work. From 1939 to 1942 he edited the art column of the newspaper Népszava, to which his father had contributed until 1925, and also published his own articles. He destroyed many of his early works after World War II. The persecution of the Jews was the theme of a series of linocuts, By Candlelight (1939–41; see Román, nos 21–4). In 1946 he became a member of the European School in Budapest, and in 1947 he went to Paris and took part in the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme (Gal. Maeght). Subsequently his work changed, and in his ...

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 ...

Danish, 20th century, male.

Active from 1947 active in France.

Born 20 or 29 May 1924, in Kolding; died 21 October 1999, in Paris.

Painter, watercolourist, draughtsman, engraver, illustrator, newspaper cartoonist. Stage sets, stage costumes.

Lars Bo was the son of an architect and painter who duly followed in his father's footsteps. His earliest drawings were of animals of every description. He enrolled at the academy of applied arts in Copenhagen in ...

Belgian, 20th century, male.

Born 1920.

Painter (including gouache), draughtsman, engraver, illustrator, decorative designer. Stage costumes and sets, postage stamps.

Oscar Bonnevalle studied at the Ghent academy and went on to produce postage stamp designs which demonstrate a genuine feeling for realism and traditional folklore....

[Erich]

(b Vienna, Jan 4, 1929).

Austrian painter, printmaker, stage designer and singer. He studied from 1945 to 1951 with Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, where his colleagues included Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter (b 1928) and Anton Lehmden (b 1929), with whom he helped develop the style known as Phantastischer Realismus. He first exhibited his works with the Art-Club at the Zedlitzhalle. In 1950 he cycled from Vienna to Paris, also travelling to Spain, North Africa, Israel and Yemen. During this period he struggled to earn a living as a folk singer. From 1958 he lived and worked as an artist in Paris, but from 1964 he divided his time between Vienna and the house he had decorated himself in Ein Hod, an artists’ village in Israel.

Brauer’s early paintings were strongly influenced at first by the peasant paintings of Pieter Bruegel I in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and then by the work of Hieronymus Bosch; Brauer developed an anecdotal style, mainly depicting rustic landscape genre scenes. After ...

French, 20th century, male.

Born 7 July 1918, in Blois.

Painter, engraver. Figure compositions, figures, portraits, interiors with figures, landscapes, urban landscapes, harbour views, seascapes, gardens, still-lifes. Stage sets, stage costumes.

François Bret studied in Paris during his teens and in 1936 became a student at the École des Beaux-Arts, studying under André Dewambez, Charles Guérin and Nicolas Untersteller. He made several visits, both for study and pleasure, to Italy in ...

French, 20th century, male.

Born 3 September 1921, in La Baule.

Painter, lithographer, illustrator. Scenes with figures, portraits, nudes, landscapes, still-lifes. Stage sets, stage costumes, church decoration.

Jean Bruneau was a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nantes from 1938 to 1945 and won the Prix de la Ville de Nantes in his final year. In ...

French, 20th century, male.

Born 1930; died 1978.

Painter, poster artist, lithographer. Figures, landscapes, scenes with figures, horse racing scenes. Stage costumes, advertising art.

Jean Charnotet trained under Paul Colin and Vertès. He exhibited in Paris, Deauville, Brussels and Rome. He did a great deal of work in the advertising industry....

French, 20th century, male.

Born 25 March 1897, in Paris; died 12 July 1981, in St-Germain-en-Laye.

Painter, engraver, illustrator. Scenes with figures, landscapes, still-lifes. Designs for tapestries, stage costumes and sets.

Roger Chastel's father was a banker and a collector. In 1914, he entered the Atelier Cormon at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which he left quite quickly for the Atelier Jean-Paul-Laurens at the Académie Privée Julian. Having been drafted in 1916, he was discharged in 1919 and enrolled at the Académie Ranson. At the same time, encouraged by the caricaturist Sem, he was commissioned to produce fashion designs and cartoons for magazines, including the leading contemporary French fashion magazine ...

(b Barcelona, April 5, 1913; d St Tropez, Aug 30, 2005).

Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker and stage designer, active in France. He was apprenticed at the age of 14 to a firm of household decorators, but he also attended evening courses in painting and sculpture at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Barcelona (the ‘Lonja’) and afterwards at the Escuela Central. After making copies after Old Masters such as Velázquez and Goya, he became interested in the Ecole de Paris and in new techniques such as collage. In 1932 he gave up his job to earn his living by making drawings for children’s comics and by designing cinema posters, including some for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He was called up by the Republican Government in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War and served as infantryman and later draughtsman, and then in January 1939 he accompanied the remnants of the Republican Army into France. After being briefly interned, he reached Paris in April 1939.

Clavé supported himself at first by drawing comic strips for children’s magazines and by making lithographs and book illustrations. His early paintings done in Paris, such as ...

(Maurice)

(b Maisons-Laffitte, July 5, 1889; d Milly-la-Forêt, Oct 11, 1963).

French writer, film maker, draughtsman, painter, printmaker and stage designer. Self-taught and with an insatiable desire to experiment with a wide variety of media, Cocteau combined his activities as a writer and artist with the roles of catalyst, patron, socialite and man of the theatre. His production as a painter, draughtsman and printmaker is mostly regarded as tangential both to the development of French art from the 1920s to the 1950s and to his own creative activities. In general his art has been regarded as an elegant but slight and fundamentally decorative variation of elements from the work of Picasso, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship in 1915. The cult of personality surrounding him, which he did little to discourage, has continued to cloud assessment of his work as a serious artist. Nevertheless the correlations that he created among different media, through his poetry, highly imaginative films and influential work for the theatre, were essential in defining the experimental ambience and cross-fertilizations of art in Paris between the two World Wars....

French, 20th century, male.

Born 13 December 1904, in Meynes; died 21 June 1977, in Paris.

Painter (gouache), engraver, illustrator. Figure compositions, still-lifes, landscapes, landscapes with figures. Murals, designs for tapestries, stage costumes and sets.

Lucien Coutaud was the great-grandson of a Provençal cabinet-maker, some of whose works are housed at the Musée d'Arlaten. His careful, meticulous approach, particularly in his own engraving work, also came from his father, a goldsmith, who taught him his craft. From 1920, for four years, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes where he was taught by Armand Coussens. In 1924 he left for Paris, where he attended the Académies Libres in Montparnasse and enrolled at the École des Arts Décoratifs. In 1952 he discovered the region of Normandy and bought a house near Villerville. Its name, the 'Cheval de Brique' (Brick Horse), would be given to the period of artistic activity lasting until 1976. He received the Prix Daumier de la Gravure in 1952 and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 1957, then Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in 1958....

(b Stevenage, Jan 16, 1872; d Vence, France, July 29, 1966).

English theatre director, designer, theorist, printmaker and typographer. He was one of the great, if controversial, innovators of the modern theatre movement. The son of the actress Ellen Terry and the architect Edward William Godwin, Craig was born into a strong theatrical tradition. He abandoned a promising career as an actor with Henry Irving’s Lyceum Company in 1897 to concentrate on directing and developing ideas about ‘the theatre of the future’. Inspired by Hubert von Herkomer’s scenic experiments with auditorium lighting and three-dimensional scenery in productions at the Bushey Art School, Herts, Craig exchanged the conventions of realistic scenery for a suggestive, abstract interplay of form, light, movement and music. This new total theatre drew on the imagination to create an architectonic vision of choreographic movement, colour harmony, visual simplicity and atmospheric effect united under the sole control of a single artist. Influenced by his relationship with the dancer Isadora Duncan, he also proposed a concept of the rhythms and movements in nature acting as the vehicle for an emotional and aesthetic experience....

French, 20th century, male.

Born 1 May 1916, in Hanoi, Vietnam; died 1988.

Painter, engraver (wood/copper), illustrator. Murals, designs for mosaics, stage costumes and sets, posters, comic strips, decorative designs, medals, postage stamps.

After studying at the school of fine arts in Hanoi in 1935...

French, 20th – 21st century, female.

Born 1957, in Amiens.

Painter, engraver (wood/lino). Stage sets, stage costumes.

Hélène Delprat studied at the Écoles des Beaux-Arts in Amiens and Paris. Between 1982 and 1984, she was an artist-in-residence at the Académie de France in Rome. She won the Prix de Rome in ...