Jean-pierre Dolla (1946) Large Painting From 1972 - Galerie St Placide Paris

Jean-Pierre Dolla ( 1946 ) France
Title: Large Red Pines
Date: 1972
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 93 x 72 cm
Signature: Lower right On the back: Handwritten title Large Red Pines and stamp of the Galerie Saint-Placide, Paris 6th Provenance * Galerie Saint-Placide, Paris 6th (stamp on the back) * Private collection

Description and analysis Created in 1972, a year after Jean-Pierre Dolla received the Prix de la Critique, this canvas illustrates the artist's precocious maturity and his place in the great tradition of French colorists. The composition features a monumental red pine, whose flamboyant branches stand out against a vibrant sky of solar yellows. The trunk, painted in deep blue, structures the space and contrasts its verticality with the swirling energy of the foliage. In the background, pink houses and ochre hills anchor the scene in a Mediterranean landscape transfigured by color. The pictorial material, applied in thick impasto, gives the work a tactile and luminous intensity. Each brushstroke, visible and assertive, contributes to a gestural writing that brings Dolla closer to Nicolas de Staël, while retaining the chromatic sensuality of Bonnard and the expressive power of Van Gogh.

Commentary Large Red Pines testifies to the search for a balance between figuration and abstraction, between nature and emotion. The tree, both rooted and vibrant, becomes a symbolic, almost heroic figure, which goes beyond the simple representation of a landscape. This work, from a pivotal period for the artist, constitutes an important milestone in his career and illustrates the critical recognition he enjoyed from the beginning. The presence of the stamp of the Galerie Saint-Placide, a center of the Parisian avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s, further reinforces its provenance and historical interest.

Biography of the artist

Jean-Pierre Dolla was born in 1946 in Flayosc, in the Var region. Trained at the Beaux-Arts in Toulon and then Marseille, he quickly established himself as a rising star in young French painting. In 1971, he received the Prix de la Critique, a prestigious distinction that had already crowned artists such as Bernard Buffet and Paul Rebeyrolle. His work is characterized by a chromatic power and gestural writing that oscillates between figuration and abstraction. Inspired by the Mediterranean light and the landscapes of the South, Dolla developed a singular pictorial language, where nature becomes a pretext for an exaltation of color and material. Presented in several Parisian galleries since the 1970s, including the Galerie Saint-Placide, he pursues a career marked by a constant search for expressive intensity and plastic freedom.