René Anne Béjà (1908-1982) - Café Life

Oil on canvas. Midday light filtered through a canopy of parasols creates an elegant and evocative scene. In summer, with a light sea breeze caressing your face, time evaporates on a terrace, while you leaf through a magazine, read a novel, smoke, and drink on a café terrace. A fauna, sluggish in the intense heat, dressed in cotton and silk, frolics like a pride of lions under the slender parasols. Renée Anne Béja (1905-1979) was a French painter and theater designer of Greek origin, born in Thessaloniki. She moved to France with her family as a child. In the 1930s, she studied with Fernand Léger and married René Berco. During this time, she exhibited in several Parisian salons, presenting views of the Périgord. During World War II, the Béja family was saved from Nazi persecution by a couple, Eugène and Walda Viès, who were later awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations. After the war, she moved to Paris and worked as a theater designer, creating sets, costumes, and masks for plays, including one at the Sorbonne and the Avignon Festival. Her works, which include nudes, still lifes, landscapes, and intimate scenes of Provence, Brittany, and Paris, are considered the heirs of the "painters of poetic reality" and show post-Cubist influences. In 1996, the artist's studio was auctioned in Paris. The Taylor Foundation has established an annual prize in his honor. - Unframed image dimensions: 98 x 98 cm / 110 x 110 cm with a beautiful frame. - Montbaron Gallery includes an information sheet prepared by a certified art historian with all its lots. This form is sent digitally and upon request.