Andre Vignoles (b.1920), French
Oil on canvas (28.7" x 19.5")
La Jacinthe
SOLD

Andre Vignoles (b.1920)

Andre Vignoles was born in the southwest part of France . He followed a course of classic studies but was attracted to drawing at an early age and gave much of his time to it. He began to paint with a student of Flandria, one of the first Fauves, who studied in the atelier of Gustave Moreau. As he continued his study of painting, Vignoles was attracted by the art of Cezanne, Van Gogh and the Primitives of the 15th century.

In 1945 Vignoles married and moved to Nice but shortly went to live in Vallauris, where he worked in ceramics to earn his living, though his spare time was devoted completely to painting. In 1945 Vignoles first met Pierre Bonnard. Bonnard gave the young artist both advice and encouragement, and in particular urged him to go to Paris. Vignoles moved to Paris in 1946. There he continued to decorate ceramics to earn his living, but he also continued to paint.  The Paris artistic community of the late 1940’s leaned strongly toward Cubism and abstraction, but despite his admiration for Picasso, and the fact that he himself had gone through a brief Cubist phase, Vignoles was repelled by a type of art he felt had become too intellectual, too decorative.  He was convinced that art must return to nature, a conviction reinforced by his numerous visits to the Louvre, which had just reopened after the war.  There he discovered Louis Le Nain, Chardin, Watteau, Poussin and El Greco.  He sketched at l’Académie Libre de la Grande Chaumière and at the Louvre as well as working alone, concentrating on patient study of nature, on perfecting his skill in drawing, on mastering the use of color.

Two years after he moved to Paris, he began to exhibit at the Salon d'Automne. In 1950 he became a member of the Salon des Independants. In 1951 he exhibited in the Salon des Jeunes Peintres, of whose committee he was later elected a member. In 1952 the French State made its first purchase of one of his paintings in succeeding years others were purchased both by the French State and the City of Paris.

Source: Anne French Fine Arts, Wally Findlay Gallery