Oil On Canvas Signed Henri Seigle (1907-1995)

BIOGRAPHY:

January 16, 1907, Henri Julien is born in Saintes (Charente-Maritime). In Montauban, his friendship with curator Félix Bouisset enables him to work on drawing for 5 years at the Musée Ingres.

1927 in Paris, he becomes Édouard Vuillard's only pupil. He also attends the Schola Cantorum and works with Vincent d'Indy for 10 years.

1933, he passes the competitive examination and enters the École des Arts décoratifs. Pupil of Legueult. Graduated from the Arts décoratifs in 1936.

1933 to 1939, graduated from the École du Louvre with a thesis on Fragonard with Robert Rey and a diploma in museography.

1937, meets Marie Pin, born in 1912 in Cassagnoles (Gard). While studying at the Beaux-Arts and the Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie, she met Henri at a Shiffrin exhibition at La Pléiade. They decide to deepen their shared interest in Surrealism and take the pseudonym Seigle.

Henri and Nô Seigle meet Victor Brauner, then André Breton, and join the Surrealist Group following Benjamin Péret's presentation of Henry Hathaway's film, "Peter Ibbetson". For André Breton, this film adaptation of Georges du Maurier's "L'Amour fou" was a "prodigious film, a triumph of Surrealist thought, being the only enterprise to exalt total love". This landmark found its embodiment in the Seigle couple (see letters from the Salon d'Automne).

1940, the Seigles ran Henri's parents' bookshop in Montauban, one painting, the other running the bookshop in the mornings, reversing roles in the afternoons. This bookshop was also a literary circle frequented by René Huygues, André Chamson and the other Louvre curators who had retreated to the Musée Ingres during the Second World War, along with the entire jazz world, Hugues Panassie and his famous American jazz guests. 1946, they meet André Malraux at the home of Jacques Jaugard, Director of Arts and Letters. 1947, Seigle is selected to exhibit at the Galerie Maeght for the 2nd International Surrealist Exhibition. After his Surrealist period (1940 - 1952), Seigle returned to more figurative subjects: still lifes with fruit, jugs, ewers..., women, nudes, landscapes of Penne (Tarn) or Paris, bridges or barges on the Seine...

In the Surrealist group, they were closely associated with André Breton, Benjamin Peret, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Bataille, Michel Carrouges, Max Ernst, Hans Bellmer and Victor Brauner. The writers around them include Michel Butor, Jean Brun, Jean Suquet, Robert Le Bel, Patrick Walberg, Julien Gracq, Peyre de Mandiargues, Octavio Paz and André Chamson. The poets with whom they have close ties are Jacques Dupin, Yves Bonnefoy and the American Nathaniel Tarn. The painters with whom they were associated were Édouard Vuillard, Alberto Giacometti, Nicolas de Staël, Hans Hartung, Henri Dubuffet and Serguei Charchoune. They contributed to the magazines Phases, Néon and La Nef.