George Laporte, Landscape of Brittany, 1960s, Oil on Canvas, Framed

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Oil on canvas (80 x 63 cm) depicting a landscape in Brittany, where he had set up his studio in … Read more Oil on canvas (80 x 63 cm) depicting a landscape in Brittany, where he had set up his studio in 1960.
In 1958, he won the Prix Bastien-Lepage at the Salon des Artistes Français. Guillermet, a publisher in Villefranche sur Saône and friend of Colette and Utrillo, encouraged him to exhibit in Lyon at the Petersen gallery. The exhibition was a great success. That same year, L'Asile de Nuit de la rue aux Prêtres de Chalon was awarded the Prix de la Ville d'Aix-en-Provence by 300 painters from all over France5. Florence Gould bought the painting, which she hung next to Antoine Watteau and François Boucher, both of whom she collected6.

In 1960, the first reproduction of a work, Bidonville à Nanterre, was published by Nomis, who issued his works as postcards, collected by museums such as the Louvre. Raphaël Mischkind, a gallery owner in Lille, notices the work. He would follow Laporte throughout his career6.

Georges Laporte really discovered Brittany in the 1960s. The sea became his main theme. He set up a studio in Quiberon. Armand Lanoux observed the artist and spoke of gestural painting in reference to Georges Mathieu, with a parallel also drawn with Nicolas de Staël. The thick layers of material characteristic of his canvases appeared at this time7.

His painting evolved in the 1970s, and his seascapes became more accomplished. Armand Lanoux analyzes them as follows: "His landscapes have become more amiable and the color more lilting. There's a definite desire to finish the canvas, to push it further than in the past8".

Following the death of his wife Jeanine in 1979, Laporte began to travel extensively, taking his painting in a new direction.

In 1987, he travelled to Corsica, where he painted canvases that the Musée de Bastia presented in the "40 Grandes Œuvres Corses" exhibition in 19909.

from 1983 onwards, he was a regular visitor to Japan, and began a series of paintings of Japan10. The exhibitions that followed established his reputation11. Those held in spring 198811 attracted no fewer than 80,000 visitors12. Georges Laporte married Akiko Takao, first prize winner for piano at the Tokyo Conservatory, in 199113.

"Then Georges Laporte discovers Corsica\. There, we realize that Laporte renounces the rules of traditional perspective; that he builds his space on a system of superimposed planes, a process that Othon Friesz used before him, but which he didn't take as far. Whether they originate in France or Japan, one senses that in his canvases, spirit now joins matter to accomplish what Charles Benharoum calls "the transmutation of elements to make them perceptible to the eye and to the touch "14.

Georges Laporte died in Paris on November 7, 2000. This piece has an attribution mark,
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