Jean Bertholle, Feux De La Saint Jean, 1965

Jean Bertholle (1909–1996)

Feux de la Saint Jean, 1965
Oil on panel
Signed and dated lower right
Titled on the reverse
53 x 58 cm

JEAN BERTHOLLE (1910–1960)

Born in Dijon in 1909, Jean Bertholle began painting in 1924 and enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Étienne in 1928. The Manet exhibition at the Orangerie in 1932 left him stunned. He attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and produced a few “imitative and academic” paintings, which he would later destroy. In 1933, he continued his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in Paul Albert Laurens’s studio, where he met Roger Bissière, Jean Le Moal, and Alfred Manessier. He helped found the Témoignage group, which brought together painters, sculptors, writers, and musicians. During this period, Bertholle was fascinated by Symbolism, Bruegel’s irony, and Bosch’s strangeness

In 1941, his painting took a new direction. Drawing inspiration from the work of the Primitives, Bertholle returned to a “highly meticulous figurative style .” He participated in the exhibition *Twenty Young Painters of the French Tradition*, the first showcase of avant-garde painting during the Occupation. Forced by financial necessity to become artistic director of the Gien pottery factory in 1943, he suffered from no longer being able to devote himself sufficiently to painting. However, in 1944, he participated in a group exhibition at the Galerie de France alongside Bissière, Le Moal, Manessier, Singier, and Étienne-Martin, as well as in the first Salon de Mai, of which he was a founding member. In the 1950s, Bertholle exhibited at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher and then secured a contract with Roque in 1957, allowing him to leave his position at the Gien pottery factory and devote himself entirely to painting. He gradually moved toward non-figurative painting, seeking to “erase references and move away from the object to get to the essence.”

Bertholle was selected in 1949 and 1960 for the Venice Biennale, as well as for the São Paulo Biennial, and participated in the 1959 exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. The first retrospective exhibitions of his work were held in 1964 in Metz, Luxembourg, and Caen. From 1965 to 1980, Bertholle taught as head of the mural art studio at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Further retrospectives took place in 1972 in Dijon, followed by exhibitions in Besançon and Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

In the late 1960s, while Bertholle was recognized alongside his peers as one of the major artists of the New School of Paris, he was one of the first to abandon the non-figurative approach. “Non-figurative forms no longer satisfied me. One day, the process began: the figurative broke through the surface once again,” he would say.

After another retrospective at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he was elected a member of the Institut de France in 1983. There he delivered a notable acceptance speech, in which he expressed his incomprehension of conceptual art, which often boils down to simple installations, before which “an audience of snobs pretends to be amazed.” Passionate about teaching, he founded his own painting academy that same year. After his death in 1996, a first retrospective was presented in La Ciotat in 1997, followed by a second in Dijon in 2011.

His works are held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the Musée d’Art Sacré in Dijon, the Centre Pompidou, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen, the Musée Greuze in Tournus, and the Musée d’Unterlinden in Colmar.