Pierre Montheillet (1923-2011), Composition In Green And Yellow, Watercolor And Gouache On Paper

Pierre Montheillet (1923-2011)
Composition in green and yellow
Watercolor and gouache on paper
Signed “Montheillet” lower left
Dimensions of the work: 50 x 65 cm
Dimensions of the frame: 60 x 80 cm

Artist from Lyon, son and grandson son of art dealers, Pierre Montheillet was introduced to painting on his own through contact with the canvases exhibited in his father's gallery on rue Duguesclin. He discovers with great admiration the works of the painter Auguste Ravier (1814-1895) of whom he will become the appointed expert. He will occupy, for more than forty years, the front of the plastic arts scene in Lyon.

Pierre Montheillet exhibited for the first time at the Salon d'Automne in 1939 before moving definitively towards non-figurative painting at the end of the 1940s. This is a pictorial trend that differs from imitative art. but also abstraction and whose manifesto exhibition “Twenty young painters of the French tradition” organized in 1941 by Jean Bazaine brings together artists such as Alfred Manessier or Charles Lapicque.

Defining himself above all as a landscape painter, Pierre Montheillet matured his plastic writing in contact with Hans Hartung, whom he met in 1948. He developed a very personal language and quickly became Lyon's master of abstract landscape painting. He thus maintains a close relationship with the landscape without worrying about any resemblance to the reality that presents itself to him. The works of Pierre Montheillet lose their figurative aspect while refuting the gratuity of the lyrical gesture proper to abstraction. Through a skilful play of rhythms and colors, his works express the emotions felt in the face of nature. He transcribes on the canvas the sensations that the outside world gives him, thus leaving a great freedom of reading to the spectator.

The gouache watercolor that we offer is made up of alternating large areas of light and shadow in an order that seems more intuitive than thoughtful. The painter expresses the spontaneity of the emotions felt in the face of nature and the particular landscape that occupies him at this precise moment while maintaining control of the gesture specific to his own way.

© A. BIOT