Germaine Lacaze (1908 – 1994) “pyla-sur-mer Beach - Arcachon Bay” (1984) Oil/canvas 55x46

Germaine LACAZE (Le Bouscat 1908 – Paris 1994) “Plage de Pyla-sur-mer” (1984) Oil on canvas signed lower right and titled on the back Bears the studio stamp on the frame H: 55 cm x W: 46 cm Biography of the artist: After a childhood in Bordeaux and Arcachon in the hamlet of Mayne, commune of Salles (Gironde), her mother (née Chabres) and she moved to Paris in 1918, where her father, Pierre-René, was an oenologist, then cellar director at the Halle aux vins. The family settled in the Latin Quarter where Germaine Lacaze discovered drawing and watercolor with Ernestine Cablet-Rinn, a former student of Madeleine Lemaire. She began preparing in 1924 to enter the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she was admitted first in 1927. There she was a student of Lucien Simon (1861-1945) and continued her training in 1931 at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where she was a student of Othon Friesz (1879-1949). That year, she exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Artistes Français. At the same time, having obtained the certificate of aptitude for teaching industrial design in practical schools of commerce and industry for young women, she was appointed assistant teacher at the annex school of the École Normale des Jeunes Filles on Boulevard des Batignolles in Paris. In 1933, she attended the summer courses in Spanish literature at the University of Santander, where the Bacarra group, created by Federico Garcia Lorca, presented theater performances. She traveled to Castile, Madrid, the following year to Andalusia, and several European countries thereafter. In 1934, she had her first studio in Montparnasse, at 115 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. She continued to teach as an assistant teacher at the ENI, and began at the Paul Bert school in Paris, which became a modern college in 1942, then a high school, where she spent her entire career until 1972. She also taught at the Beaux-Arts in Paris for around thirty years. An activist in the National Union of Secondary Education after the war, she was elected as a full member of the national joint committee of artistic and practical teachers, continuously, in the four elections of staff representatives between 1948 and 1961, except in the 1952 election when she was elected as a substitute. From 1945 onwards, Germaine Lacaze exhibited regularly throughout her career at the Salons des Indépendants, des Femmes Peintres et Sculpeurs, d'Automne, de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts et du Dessin and de la Peinture à l'Aqua, the only way for her, as a female artist, to gain recognition. After retiring from professional work, she benefited from an artist's apartment in the city of Paris, near the Bois de Vincennes, from 1974. She also painted from 1937 until the end of her life, in her country house in Villeneuve-le-Comte (Seine-et-Marne), purchased by her father. Germaine Lacaze is part of the "École de Paris," the second generation. Her colorful and figurative work and her intimately inspired themes connect her to the movement of "painters of poetic reality." She received numerous prizes and awards. The publication of the catalogue raisonné of her painted work by Éditions de l'Amateur (preface by Jacques Chaban-Delmas, text by Cécile Ritzenthaler) in 1991 preceded her last exhibition in 1993 at the Roland Maréchal – L'ami des lettres gallery in Bordeaux. "Her literary culture, her love of words and theater, her practice of Spanish and Italian have left the memory of a woman of character and commitment, whose life was passionately devoted to her art."