Hubert Aicardi (1922-1991), Les Pebbles, Circa 1960, Oil On Panel

Hubert Aicardi (1922-1991)
Les Galets, circa 1960
Oil on Isorel panel
Signed top left
14 x 35 cm

Hubert Aicardi is a painter of the Provençal school born in Marseille in 1922. He frequented “the painters of Péano” named after the café on rue Fortia where the post-war Provençal masters such as Arsène Sari (1895-1995), Pierre Ambrogiani (1907-1985) and Eugène Baboulène (1905-1994) met. Anchored in Provence, Hubert Aicardi produced singular views of the rocky landscapes and seaside of his native region which broke with the representations inherited from Cézanne. He is also the author of several illustrations, including that of L'Anneau des mers by Edouard Peisson, published in 1952 by Flammarion. Since the 1970s, the Galerie Jouvène (Marseille) has dedicated several solo exhibitions to him.

The breath of rigor and invention

“Everything is true, and yet nothing is exactly reproduced. Everything is fantasy, and yet each element is recognizable. Aicardi’s paradox lies in the fact that the rigor of his paintings has breath, and the realism he uses is invented. The coves, the beaches, the tree, the forest fire, the boats, the small ports, the windows, the walls, the palisades, the summers of leaden skies, the flowery springs, the glacial winters, the autumns adorned with Byzantine goldwork, are the themes of his universe in non-chronological order. They celebrated in advance the world of the unusual where he has just taken up his winter quarters: that of the demiurges.” André Alauzen di Genova, historian, journalist and art critic (1924-1998), 1991.