Jean-pierre Blanche (1927-2022), Six Grenades, Oil On Canvas, Signed On The Right

Jean-Pierre BLANCHE, born in 1927, arrived in Aix-en-Provence in 1965. He lives and works at 3 Adanson, in the Hôtel de Ramatuelle, where the Galerie Jeanne Bossert is located today. J. P. Blanche studied at the Beaux-Arts in Montpellier and Paris. He was awarded the Villa Ab-Del-Tif prize in 1955. After detours to the shores of the Mediterranean, he settled in the Montpellier region, in Puéchabon in 1964. When he arrived in Aix, he was appointed professor of drawing at the Marseille School of Arts and Architecture. Jean-Pierre Blanche is a studio artist, whose paintings seek to transcribe the world through landscape, using transparent materials and light. Through the subjects of his paintings - windows, the studio, grenades, nights, Vauvenargues - he expresses a colorful and highly poetic impression. From the 1990s until his death in 2022, pastel was his main mode of expression, "it's the way to unite painting and drawing", as he confided to Michel Hilaire, former curator of the Musée Fabre. The strength of his painting stems from his constant determination never to neglect drawing in favor of color, nor color in favor of drawing. He puts it very well himself: "When I work with color, drawing calls me to order", "When I draw with black stone, charcoal or Indian ink, I think color. The grandeur and originality of his painting stem from his determination to stay away from trends and fashions, and to live as close to nature as possible. His figurative painting is modern, with an ever-increasing focus on the essential, to the point of reducing the subject to the point of approaching abstraction.Jean-Pierre Blanche's work has been exhibited at the Musée Estrine in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, and the Musée Regards de Provence in Marseille in 2024.