Tennis Party Lithography By Charles Lapicque

"Part of tennis", lithograph signed Lapicque and numbered 122/125 in pencil. Under glass and framed, carved black wood frame. Catalog raisonné Lapicque HC 626. Dimensions of the lithography at sight 44x59 cm. Actual dimensions of the lithography 49x63 cm. Dimensions of the image 39x54 cm. Overall dimensions, with frame, 54,5x70 cm. Charles Lapicque, born in 1898 in Theizé (Rhône), died in Orsay on July 15, 1988, from a family who practices the sciences and the arts, Charles Lapicque, in the classic humanist tradition, will not stop, his life, of multiply the experiences. At the same time artist and scientist, he pursues for a long time these two vocations in parallel. Graduated in 1921 from the Ecole Centrale, he worked as an engineer until 1928. In 1931, he was forced to accept a post of preparator at the Faculty of Sciences of Paris, he took advantage of the resources of his laboratory to carry out research on the perception of colors and, applying them in his painting, does not hesitate to completely question the pictorial conventions of the Renaissance. The "grid system" he developed in 1939, derived from cubist space, fauvism and medieval art, is the culmination of his optical discoveries, which are themselves underpinned by an approach philosophical. This new style will have a great influence on the painters of the exhibition "Twenty young painters of French tradition", in which Lapicque participates in 1941, at the gallery Braun. In 1943, he definitively abandoned his scientific career to devote himself entirely to his pictorial work. Contrary to the dominant trends of his time, he affirmed in the fifties his attachment to figuration, while performing almost in spite of himself, some incursions into abstraction. He reviews small and large genres, keeping his whole life a predilection for the theme of the sea, for sumptuous colors and dynamic compositions, always looking for the balance and the bliss he expects from painting.