Richard Mandin (1909-2002) Don Quixote And Sancho Panza

The universe of Richard Mandin, the fiery material born from large and harmonious brush strokes on a hardboard support whose smooth reserves contrast with the thickness of the paint, which gives life and movement to this mythical subject which inspired the greatest artists, Don Quixote and his inseparable Sancho Panza. The work in good condition is offered in a modern black American box type frame which measures 57.5 cm by 72.5 cm and 50 cm by 65 cm for the hardboard panel alone. Signed lower left, it represents a wooded landscape where Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are heading towards a mill.
This work was exhibited at the Cassis Museum during the retrospective exhibition dedicated to the artist from June 23, 2023 to September 30, 2023.

After studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Marseille and the Ecole du Louvre, he began selling his drawings on the street. Later, at the end of the War of 39-45, the merchant André Maurice became interested in his paintings. He exhibited in Paris at Jean-Marc Vidal in 1946 with Pierre Ambrogiani, Antoine Ferrari, Antoine Serra, Auguste Chabaud, as well as in New York at the G.Binet Gallery. He was also found regularly at the Galerie Jouvène in Marseille until he regained his independence. He continues his Marseille workshop, supported by a clientele of collectors. Most of the time he paints on paper which he then mounts on cardboard or canvas. He organizes his painting around a first touch which sets the tone for the rest. Characters, portraits or silhouettes, dogs, horses, birds, flowers, seascapes, landscapes, still lifes, interior scenes, emerge from a material worked in the style of Monticelli that he admires and orchestrated with passion around the key initial. Mandin's drawings, very linear, are of great purity and have an evocative force. His pictorial universe is difficult to approach because the objects seem drowned in the mass, often having the same tone as their environment, and only emerge when the eye has become accustomed to them. For the painter, inanimate objects or living subjects sometimes have the same tones as those of their environment, and it is only through oppositions of touches and relationships of materials that they can be brought out. The artist must be this demiurge of space who sublimates its vibrations. Mandin's painting is musical, strong in the strong resonances that he seeks between blues, grays, greens, browns, oranges, harmonious by the work that he imposes on himself in order to be the only composer , conductor, performer and technician of his painting: he prepares the materials, organizes the colors, orders the composition, executes it like a soloist playing an original score in concert. Richard Mandin has thus recreated an entire close and sensitive world.