French, 20th century, male.
Born 10 February 1944, in Rocroi (Ardennes).
Painter (including gouache), draughtsman, decorative designer. Stage costumes and sets.
Aballain graduated from the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1965.
He designed the stage sets and costumes for A Season in Hell...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 19 August 1890, in Fontainebleau; died 22 April 1969, in Paris.
Painter, engraver, illustrator. Figure compositions, figures, landscapes. Designs for tapestries, wall decorations, stage sets.
Yves Alix studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, and won a place at the École des Beaux-Arts, but instead chose to enter the Académie Ranson, where Bonnard, Vuillard, K.-X. Roussel, Maurice Denis and Sérusier worked as teachers. He began exhibiting his work in 1912 at the Salon des Indépendants, of which he became a committee member, as well as at the Salon d'Automne. He also exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon Comparaisons. Alix's work featured in a large number of solo exhibitions, mostly in art galleries in Paris, but also in Strasbourg, and at a retrospective exhibition in 1990 to mark the centenary of his birth, held at the Donadeï de Campredon hotel of the Isle-sur-la-Sorgue....
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 27 February 1846, in Rouen; died 1917.
Painter, draughtsman, decorative artist. Stage sets.
The son of an actor, Amable had his stage debut in a pantomime at the Funambules Theatre on Boulevard du Temple in 1852, which casts doubt on his accepted date of birth, and then played at the Comte Theatre in ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 1943, in Aubusson (Creuse).
Painter, decorative designer. Stage sets.
Dominique André is the son of Maurice André. At the age of 15 in Paris, he prepared for admission to the École des Arts Décoratifs and at the Académie Charpentier. He was admitted the following year, and studied with Félix Labisse, Marcel Gromaire, Picart-Le-Doux. In ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 1926, in Frémery (Moselle).
Painter, sculptor, decorative designer. Figure compositions, religious subjects, landscapes. Murals, church decoration, designs for mosaics and stained-glass windows, stage sets, stage costumes.
Arcabas studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and also had a degree. He was a friend of the painter Dimitri Varbanesco. He exhibited in numerous towns in France and abroad. From ...
Spanish, 20th century, male.
Active in France from 1958.
Born 26 February 1937, in Madrid.
Painter (including mixed media), watercolourist, decorative designer, sculptor, engraver, draughtsman. Scenes with figures, figures, portraits. Stage sets.
Nouvelle Figuration, Figuration Narrative.
Eduardo Arroyo was educated at the Lycée Français in Madrid and then at the School of Journalism. At the age of 21, he left Franco's Spain for Paris, where he was to remain in exile for some 20 years. Although his original intention was to be a journalist rather than a painter, he saw painting as the most accessible and effective medium for his main aim, which was political militancy. He taught himself to paint, but this was made easier by the fact that it was not so much any possible aesthetic dimension to the work that interested him, but rather its immediate intelligibility and the power of the image. He brought together a mixture of techniques to create the effective image. Collage in its various forms was a constant feature of his style. In his early work, he often turned to what was then called 'Modification': that is, taking either a genuine picture from a second-hand shop, or a reproduction (as in the case of a work by Goya, Velázquez or Miró), and superimposing pictorial additions to alter the meaning, generally with the aim of being controversial and often humorous as well. He rapidly became a master of minimalist techniques, and soon began to exhibit at group shows. Some of these early shows were at the traditional exhibition centres, such as the Salon des Grands et Jeunes d'Aujourd'hui and the Salon de Mai. He was an influential member of the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, where he exhibited from 1960 onwards, and his exhibitions there between 1964 and 1969 (with Aillaud and Récalcati) triggered militant activity that led to a temporary change in the group's name....
Spanish, 20th century, male.
Active in France from 1910.
Born 1892, in Bilbao; died April 1971, in St-Jean-de-Luz, France.
Painter (gouache), illustrator, decorative designer. Landscapes with figures. Stage sets.
Ramiro Arrue y Valle, the brother of Alberto, José and Ricardo, was educated at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. Although he painted Basque subjects, he was mainly active in France. Before World War I, he exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris, and was a regular exhibitor at the Salon d'Automne ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born February 1903, in Tunis; died 24 January 1978, in Aix-en-Provence.
Painter, architect, decorative designer, designer, poster artist. Wall decorations, stage costumes and sets, furniture, advertising art.
Art et Lumière.
Félix Tahar Marie Aublet was the son of the Orientalist painter Albert Aublet. He was brought up both in Neuilly, France, and in a Moorish palace in Tunis, where the family spent six months of the year. His second forename, Tahar, means 'blessed one' in Arabic. In ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 17 September 1943, in Lillebonne (Seine-Maritime).
Painter, draughtsman, illustrator. Historical subjects, scenes with figures. Stage sets, wall decorations.
Nouvelle Figuration.
Daniel Authouart decided to become a painter at the age of 14 on discovering the work of Toulouse-Lautrec, although he had to wait for two years to enter the fine arts school. He devoted these two years to drawing, observing the works of the great masters in the museum in Rouen and reading Flaubert, Spillane, Faulkner and Sartre. He lives and works in Rouen, painting the story of his surroundings in a style of exaggerated realism. He says, 'Each of my pictures strives to be a bit like a cartoon strip with a single image. By means of the different signs in my canvases, it is possible to discover what happened before and what may be going to happen next.' His compositions appear to unroll to infinity, not only in terms of time and space but in the profusion of detail. He has created record sleeves for musical artists and variety performers, and has designed theatre décor for the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, the Athénée, the Essaïon and the Maison de la Culture in Le Havre. He has produced illustrations for Baudelaire's ...
French, 20th century, female.
Born 1894, in Marseilles; died 1989.
Painter, fresco artist, decorative designer, illustrator. Portraits, scenes with figures, landscapes, waterscapes. Stage sets.
After studying drawing at the Conservatoire in Toulouse, Alix Aymé worked with Maurice Denis and assisted in the decoration of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. From the 1920s, she taught art in the French lycée in Hanoi and travelled widely in Indochina, India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). In ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born c. 1880, in Paris.
Painter. Landscapes, urban views. Murals, decorative panels, stage costumes, posters.
Maurice Barbey worked in several different techniques including large decorative panels for a hotel in St-Cast, posters and theatrical costumes as well as paintings. His landscapes are sometimes warm in colour, with large splashes of pure colour, or practically monochromatic as in his views of small German towns in the snow....
French, 20th century, male.
Born 4 August 1927, in Paris.
Painter, decorative designer, illustrator. Stage sets.
André Beaurepaire exhibited from 1948 onwards, and featured at the Salon Comparaisons in 1956. He provided illustrations for Wisdom ( Sagesse) by Paul Verlaine and for an edition of Corneille. He is best known for his stage designs, among many others for Jean Cocteau's ...
British, 20th century, female.
Born 13 May 1879, near London; died 7 April 1961, in Sussex.
Painter, engraver, illustrator, designer, graphic designer. Still-lifes, landscapes, portraits. Designs for wallpapers and fabrics, furniture, stage sets.
Bloomsbury Group, Omega Workshops, London Group, Euston Road School.
Vanessa Bell was the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, the sister of Virginia Woolf and the wife of the art historian Clive Bell. She started her training with the Royal Academician Sir Arthur Cope, and continued it at the Royal Academy of Art under the direction of the American portrait painter John Singer Sargent between 1900 and 1904....
Tunisian, 20th century, male.
Born 26 May 1921, in Tunis.
Painter, miniaturist. Genre scenes, local scenes, figures. Wall decorations, stage sets, designs for stained glass.
Jélal Ben Abdallah was a student at the school of fine art in Tunis. Initially he was a miniaturist, having studied traditional Islamic art and developed an oriental style, often defined as Tunisian. He portrays the traditions and ceremonies of Tunisian life in a make-up inspired by the ancient miniatures, using a range of warm ochres and soft browns. He also proved himself to be capable of adapting the images from these miniatures to a much larger format, that of murals, especially popular in the banks of Tunisia. His pleasant illustrations of Tunisian traditions are very popular with the public. As well as a certain ease of style and subject-matter, he can also achieve a certain poetic vein in his work....
Russian, 20th century, male.
Active in Italy.
Born 1901, in St Petersburg.
Painter, decorative designer. Stage costumes and sets.
The son of Alexander Benois, Nikolai Benois settled in Italy from 1925 where he worked for the main theatres including the Opera in Rome and La Scala in Milan. His imagery is rather traditional but he mastered the resources of modern set design....
French, 20th century, male.
Active also active in Tunisia.
Born 20 March 1897, in Saumur; died 23 January 1990, in Nice.
Painter, decorative designer. Genre scenes, sporting subjects, figures, landscapes. Stage sets.
Pierre Berjole studied first at the École des Beaux-Arts in Tours; following World War I, he continued his training with the at the same institution in Paris, and at Montparnasse. He settled in Paris from ...
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 ...
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 1860, in Lyons; died 3 March 1905, in Paris.
Painter, draughtsman, decorative artist. Figures. Stage costumes.
Charles Bianchini began as a designer of costumes for revues and in 1893 was appointed artist to the Paris Opéra. He also produced costume designs for the Opéra-Comique and other companies, designs which were always right for the roles and for the physique of the actors involved....
Russian, 20th century, male.
Active in France from 1922.
Born 21 September 1900, in Bendery (Odessa); died 3 February 1948, in Catania, Italy.
Painter, draughtsman, watercolourist, decorative artist. Stage costumes and sets, posters.
Boris Konstantinovich Bilinsky studied theatre production in Berlin with Max Reinhardt between 1920 and 1922 and painting with Leon Bakst. He settled in France in 1922, then in Rome in 1939....
Danish, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 21 February 1867, in Helsingør; died 1930.
Painter, draughtsman, decorative designer. Figures, scenes with figures, genre scenes, interiors with figures. Stage sets.
Gerhard Blom attended courses at the Kunstakademi in Copenhagen from 1885 to 1887, then studied under Zahrtmann. He taught at a municipal school in ...
