PIERRE-HENRY’S POETICAL REALITY

Born in 1924, PIERRE HENRY studied painting, the art of fresco and of etching in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, in Paris. Since 1950, the date of his first exhibition, his talent led him to become one of the leaders of today’s figurative school. From major prizes to homages, PIERRE HENRY has imposed a specific œuvre, which is nonetheless very much of his times. A retrospective is an adventure.

The paintings gathered together under a different lighting live differently. If, in my paintings, alongside serene canvases, there appears anguish, death, it is because in a man’s lifetime, joy and pain are constantly intermingled. I believe that the artists, painters, poets, and musicians, are our society’s prophets, its preachers…. They bear witness to their anguish face to face with humanity in total confusion, which feels and knows it is threatened. These imprecations are also witnesses of their love, their hopefulness. That is what I have attempted to do throughout my life. It is often difficult, but also exalting. I believe in beautiful craft, in drawing, in patiently acquired techniques, then forgotten in favor of the mind. In short, I am going totally against all of everything. But I try to be myself. PIERRE - HENRY

The hundred or so oil paintings on exhibit, going from 1948 onward, cover more than 65 years of work…. and the themes broached, usually linked to the human condition (fate, love, war, time, life or death) bear witness to a reality bathed in an oneiric atmosphere. « Sensual painting at first sight, of course, but also spiritual painting, profoundly meditated and interiorized, simultaneously spare and tender ». André LAFARGUE

Pierre-Henry also likes lighter subjects, like his splendid still-lives, but which he endows with strange perspectives, making them unexpected and, therefore, highly personal. Whatever the message, the technique employed, free but rigorous, it embodies the painter’s impressions and emotions. At first smooth, the painting slowly acquires reliefs. The color is dazzling and the backgrounds alone make up genuine paintings. That especially sumptuous texture emphasizes their graphic precision.

« With what love of the craft are these paintings made! Smooth paint, flattened out, provides a lacquered effect, and brings to mind the great Flemish masters’ works » René DOMERGUE.

An imaginary made up of magic and of reality, a learned combination, opening up to the eyes and to the soul, the doorways of dreams …. where the answers are to be found. Here the artist is the initiator and leads you towards a renewal. He forces us to see, or rather to perceive, the power of details, which are the keys to mystery.

PIERRE-HENRY’s Artwork, a painter-philosopher, engenders respect and imposes silence. The path to be followed to grasp the artist’s message is necessarily solitary. Within that enclosed world, poetically unusual, the individual needs to establish landmarks through his own emotions in order to see what must be seen.

« A subtle and refined quality of silence. An enclosed world at the borders of reality and dreaming ». Pierre CABANNE