Les Alpilles (provence) - Oil On Canvas Signed Henri-andré Martin (1918-2004)

Oil on canvas signed lower left Henri-André Martin, dated 1990, depicting the Alpilles in Provence (France). Dimensions: 100 x 100 cm.

"In the 1980s, Provence and especially the Alpilles, which had long been favored themes, provided my father with a source of intense inspiration and evolution towards much more abstract canvases" (source: https://numerabilis.u-paris.fr/partenaires/sfhm/wp-content/uploads/Journees/2009/04.pdf)

Biography:
Henri André Martin was born in Lyon in January 1918, into a medical family. From an early age, his passion was painting, but, yielding to his family's influence, he chose medicine, although he knew how to divide his time between these two arts.
... Throughout his career, he combined medicine and painting, and took a leading role in this art form, culminating in a book on Van Gogh's illness, published in 1994. His pictorial work is very rich: paintings, serigraphs, lithographs. He won the Prix Maurice Utrillo in 1964, and was awarded an honorary medal by the Société lyonnaise des Beaux Arts. He took part in numerous exhibitions in French and foreign galleries (New York, Frankfurt, Geneva, etc.), as well as producing highly bibliographical books: such as "Bestiaire d'Insectes", "Lyon de René Deroudille et Jean Albert Carlotti". He was a corresponding member of the Institut de France. He will always be remembered as a brilliant surgeon, an esteemed master who handled both scalpel and brush with equal elegance. Contemplative yet active, he wanted to make painting his vocation. This vocation had been encouraged by Joseph Lamberton, a painter and sculptor from Saint-Etienne, and by Henry Grosjean, who agreed to come and give my father painting lessons during the summer at the family's Bresse property in Jasseron. Henri André Martin's friends were mostly artists. Joseph Lamberton, Henry Grosjean and Pierre Eugène Montézin, Jean Carlotti, Jean Fusaro, André Cottavoz, Jacques Truphémus, among the leaders of the Lyonnaise school, regularly exhibited at Galerie Malaval, a gallery owned by my father and run by his wife Anne-Marie. They included Mario Prassinos and Roland Oudot, who painted in Eygalières, Henri de Waroquier, Camille Hilaire, Louis Pons and Michel Ciry. The latter two, very close friends with very different personalities, took it in turns to spend long periods in our Eygalières home. Joseph Ales-Sandri, our neighbor, and Jean Cardot, perpetual secretary of the Institut de France, were our dearest friends, but we could mention many others. Meeting, then befriending, Jean Souverbie is a good illustration of my father's personality.

Titles and awards
Many awards, including the Prix Maurice Utrillo in 1964. Out of competition, then honorary medal from the Société lyonnaise des Beaux-Arts. Member of the Salon du Sud-Est until his death in 2004. Salon du dessin et de la peinture à l'eau, Paris. Member of the Salon de la Société nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Member of the Salon d'Automne, Paris: correspondent of the Institut de France.

Exhibitions:
1962: Galerie Chardin (Paris);1965:
(Geneva); 1965: Château de la Jansonne
1971-2000: Galerie Malaval (Lyon); 1973: Château de la Jansonne (Cavaillon); 1978: Chapelle du Grand Couvent (Cavaillon); 1979: center d'art contemporain de Lacoux; 1981: Galerie Visconti (Paris); 1987: Foire d'Art Contempo- rain de Rillieux (Rhône); 1988: Maison de Lyon (Lyon); 1992: Artrium (Auditorium Maurice Ravel) Lyon; Galerie Braquahage d'Honfleur; 1996: Fondation Léa et Napoléon Bullukian (Lyon); 2008: Fondation Léa et Napoléon Bullukian (Lyon).
Paintings exhibited in numerous galleries
New York, Dallas, Caracas, Geneva.
Serigraphs, lithographs, large books
Numerous serigraphs and lithographs (atelier Mourlot, then Dejobert in Paris, atelier Badier in Lyon, atelier André Dupertuis in Eygalières); collection of six plates entitled Les troncs and above all L'olivier, a work produced in the purest tradition of the Grands livres; publishing of high bibliophile books: Le bestiaire d'insectes by Jean Vasca and Joseph Alessandri, Le Lyon by René Déroudille and Jean Carlotti, La création du Monde by Jean Piaubert.
Public collection: Ville de Lyon. Musée de Rodez. Fond National d'Art Contemporain...