Gaston-louis Marchal "tribute To Frida Kahlo" "blossom Anyway" Castres Tarn 2000

Gaston-Louis Marchal "Homage to Frida Kahlo" or "Flower anyway" Signed lower right. Countersigned, dated and located on the back. Made in Castres (Tarn) in 2000. Between and pencil on paper. Dimensions: 60 x 40 cm G.-L. Marchal is a painter, poet, writer, former student and friend of the sculptor Zadkine, whose will he was executor. Expelled from Metz with his family in 1940, he was successively a farmhand, teacher, counselor and then director of educational and professional guidance centers. He lived for several years in Castres from 1970, and he is the author, on the walls of the church of Notre-Dame de l'Espérance, of a monumental and incredible fresco of the Apocalypse, a vision of the year 2000. It shows the horrors of the last century, but also the serene majesty of the heavenly Jerusalem. He devoted himself to all the plastic arts, resulting in a rich work of more than 2500 drawings, sculptures, photos, prints, mural compositions and illustrations. These works have been the subject of more than 200 exhibitions, including one in China, and some are included in the collections of the museums of Arras, Castres, Lille and Paris. He also created, based on the drawings of a deportee, 12 large paintings exhibited at the Struthof concentration camp in Alsace. He wrote "Zadkine, homme du Quercy", which relates the marriage of the latter to Valentine Prax, "Ossip Zadkine. La sculpture, toute une vie" and several other works on Zadkine. He also recalled his beginnings as a teacher in a delightful book of memories "Les hussards verts". In 2003 he left Castres for the Biarritz region, where his wife is from.