Philippe Bonnet (1927-2017) Still Life With Pears, 1948

Philippe Bonnet (1927-2017) Still life with pears, 1948, oil on canvas, cm 35 x 27
Signed top right.
With frame: cm 41 x 33 x 4,5

Provenance: private collection

From the begin, Bonnet paints with attentive to reflection, silence and the secret life of the world around him.
His plastic preoccupations gradually lead him to translate the spirit of things, without however straying too far from reality.
From 1944 to 1946, he took courses at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière, mainly drawing. André Lhote advised him and from 1947 he devoted himself entirely to painting, isolating himself in his work.
The meeting with the couple of collectors Zervos is fundamental. Bonnet meets them with Nicolas de Staël whom he admires a lot, Victor Brauner, Wilfredo Lam and other artists of the time.
In 1953, Bonnet participated in the Lissone Prize in Milan with de Staël, Vieira da Silva, Brauner, Lam and won the second Prize.
Its official beginnings date back to the following year when the Galerie Blanche in Stockholm presented its first exhibition with a preface by Christian Zervos.
On the same occasion, the review "Cahiers d'Art" publishes a review of his works by Jean Laude.
Until 1955, when he received the Fénéon Prize and exhibited at the Obelisk Gallery in London, the painter was faithful to the theme of still life with an ever greater simplification of forms.
Several still lifes of this type were presented at the Galerie Berggruen in Paris in 1956. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog prefaced by Tristan Tzara. Thanks to the latter, Bonnet meets Giacometti.
The 1956 series relating to "Interiors" and "Flowers" followed those of "Ports", "Boats" and "Beaches", painted near Honfleur.
Following a stay in Ischia in 1957, the “Marines” series were born and, the same year, the “Toits de Paris” which were exhibited at the Arthur Tooth Gallery in London, with a presentation by R. Melville.
For several years, the artist has favored a palette of dark colors (gray, green, black) which become lighter as the sky and light gain importance in his works. As he said himself at this time, "What worries me the most is the light, the transparency, the instability".
In the following years, whites, light grays, blues, gray-blues and ochres dominate and his original transparencies are born from the superposition of one tone on another. More than ever, it is now the material that interests the artist.
In 1960, he exhibited at the Cahiers d'Art Gallery (with a preface by René de Solier) followed by a new personal exhibition the following year.
The painter confesses: "I will never be able to start a work from a blank canvas". Indeed, the canvas is always prepared and then "enriched" with different layers of pictorial material which are then "scraped" and "scraped".
In 1961, he participated in the Paris Biennale.
In 1963 and 1972, he exhibited at the Coard Gallery, where he regularly presented his works from 1982.

Museums: Paris (Museum of Modern Art; CNAC)

The painting is in good condition.

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