André Verdet - Large Original Pastel Signed - St Paul 1957

GRAND PASTEL ORIGINAL IN COLORS ON PAPER signed and dated, Verdet 57, St Paul.
Stunning sunset behind the hills of Saint-Paul de Vence, a very "hairy" black fir tree in the foreground.

Unusual work from his first series of Sortilèges de Provence, produced under the encouragement of Pablo Picasso.

Already close to Jean Giono in the mid-1930s, André Verdet met Jacques Prévert in Saint-Paul in 1941. Together they published two collections, C'est à Saint Paul de Vence and Histoires.Reformed for health reasons, he joined the Resistance, captured in February 1944, and deported to Auschwitz and then Buchenwald. On liberation, Verdet published several collections of poems and met Pablo Picasso in 1950 through Prévert. After the publication of Provende noire (1955), he no longer found inspiration, and Picasso advised him: "Work not only in front of the landscape but in it and with it... In this way you will be able to continue to say in drawing what you have written in your poems of Provence Noire"(in Pluriel, autobiography, 1992). From this encouragement came his first series of works, Sortilèges de Provence, which he produced from 1956 to 1960.

"There is no example of a poet bursting into painting with such suddenness and success"
Alain Bosquet - Pierre de vie, Hommage à André Verdet, 1986.

1957. 50 x 65.5 cm,

A restoration in the upper part.