Jean Guindon (1883-1975) The Old Port Of Marseille

Touches of color affixed to a black background which give great intensity and a strong presence to this oil on cardboard by the leader of committed Marseille artists called "proletarians" of the early 20th century, Jean Guindon. The work is framed in a carved wooden frame tinted in matte black which suits it very well and which measures 60 cm by 72 cm and 61 cm by 49 cm for the painting alone. It represents fishing boats in the Old Port of Marseille, on the right on the other bank, the fish auction which has now become the famous theatre, and in the background the chimneys of the soap factories in the rue Sainte where they made the famous Marseille soap. A beautiful testimony to the past. The work dating from the thirties is in perfect condition, it is signed lower left. Landscaper and sailor, he exhibited at the Salon de la Mer and he is, according to André Alauzen in his dictionary of painters of Provence and Côte d'Azur, one of the best interpreters of the Old Port of Marseille and the landscapes of Cassis, where he welcomes in the house which rents in 1923 the fauvist painters in need of the Côte d'Azur, but also Leprin and Pascin. During the interwar period, he was one of the leaders of the School of Proletarian Painters and specialized in gouaches on black paper in which he expressed, leaving the reserves of the paper, and with a simplification of forms by going directly to the essential, the condition of the working class and that of ordinary people. In 1971, La Vieille Charité in Marseille hosted a major exhibition of his works. The Museum of Cassis preserves of him "Boats in the Port of Cassis", in Marseilles one finds his paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, at the Cantini Museum, and at the Regards de Provence Foundation.