Bernard Gantner (1928-2018)

Bernard Gantner (1928-2018) Winnowing, Oil on Canvas 60x73cm Bernard Gantner (1928-2018) Born August 16, 1928 in Belfort, died June 1, 2018. Painter of landscapes, snow, still lifes, painter of gouache, watercolourist, engraver, illustrator. Bernard Gantner is an accomplished artist of international renown. Very young He showed an interest in the arts. Encouraged by the curator of the Belfort Museum, he decided at the age of ten to devote his life to painting. In 1961 he obtained the "Prix de la Critique" awarded by his friend the famous writer and critic Claude Roger-Marx. Bernard Gantner then embarked on the start of an international career. " Fifty personal exhibitions in Japan, sixty in the United States, ten in Canada, exhibitions in England and in all the major cities of France. Retrospectives at the Château de Val, Abbaye de Baume-les-Dames, Musée Florival in Guebwiller, Mulhouse , Strasbourg, Vittel, Chicago, Basel, Tokyo. Many purchases by museums in France and abroad. " In 1998 he obtained the Legion of Honor. He opens the Espace Gantner in Bourogne and makes a donation of his lithographic work: more than 550 lithographs as well as etchings; he illustrated among others the tales of Maupassant, the poems of E.Verhaeren and edited a dozen bibliophile books often with the collaboration of Claude Roger-Marx. After living on the shores of Lake Geneva, Bernard Gantner returned to his native region where he devotes his time to his art, his museum and to the embellishment of the surrounding gardens which he transforms and designs himself. He finds his inspiration in the landscapes that surround him, constantly chasing snow, water and vegetation in all their forms in all seasons, preferring old snow-covered farms against a backdrop of fir trees in the Vosges and Haute-Savoie.