Jean Cluseau-lanauve (1914-1997) Beynac And The Dordogne

Jean CLUSEAU-LANAUVE
(Périgueux 1914 - Paris 1997)
Beynac
Oil on canvas
H. 73 cm; L. 60 cm
Signed lower right. Countersigned, titled on the back.

Provenance: Private collection, south-eastern France

Jean Cluseau-Lanauve was born in 1914 in Périgueux into a family from the department. It is here that he “meets” the arts, pushed by his parents in this direction, before leaving to study them in Paris where he will settle. He entered in 1933, only to leave shortly before the war, during which he was also taken prisoner in Germany. A formation of lithographer and draftsman will trace his beginnings of career, to become in the years 50 to 80, a figure recognized as much by his contemporary artists, as by a fervent clientele.

Although the head of a girl in the post-war Paris school, Cluseau-Lanauve did not forsake his native Périgord. There he owns a house near Les Eyzies where he sets up a small workshop giving him a view of the colors of this land he loves so much. His first painting presented at the Salon des Artistes Français, in 1935, is a Landscape of Périgord. It will also be bought by the State.

This dear Périgord, Cluseau-Lanauve replaces it permanently in his works, which he realizes from sketches taken from the motif. Many notebooks of these sketches have been scattered since his death and are found today on the art market, sheet by sheet. His oils, which became cubists in the 1950s, are images with clean lines that seek only to bring out the idealized subject, in luminous facets. If Beynac is an emblematic place of Périgord, Cluseau-Lanauve knows how to sublimate it in its composition.

The vertical axis is accentuated by the view of the Dordogne dominated by the village and the fortress, all surrounded by the vegetation in the foreground. Warm and vibrant hues