Vintage Impressionist Floral Still Life Painting by French - American Artist Lucien Biva

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Vintage floral still life painting by French American Artist Lucien Biva. Oil on canvas, presented in a gilt plein air … Read more Vintage floral still life painting by French American Artist Lucien Biva. Oil on canvas, presented in a gilt plein air frame with notched corners. C.1920s-1950s

Lucien Felix Biva (13 August 1878 – October 1965) was a French–American artist. He studied painting early on with his father, the Naturalist painter Henri Biva. He was also the nephew of the painter Paul Biva. Between 1921 and 1949 he was an ornamental designer for textile fabrics and similar articles of manufacture having surface ornamentation, patenting over eighty designs with the United States Patent Office. He was a member of the Society of French Artists and the Society of Independent Artists

Biva was born in Paris, where his family lived in Montmartre, 18 rue du Vieux Chemin de Paris (named rue Ravignan after 1867), and it is from designer Charles Biva (1821–1884), father of Henri Biva and Paul Biva that the family developed its artistic talents. In 1845, motivated by the fashion of the time for bourgeois interior ornamentation, Charles Biva opened a wallpaper factory in a northern suburb of Paris where his sons Henri and Paul began their apprenticeship as designers and colorists.

Lucien Biva benefited from the creativity inherent in his family, as well as from the proliferation of artistic environment of Montmartre at the end of 19th century and early 20th century, the so–called the Belle Époque.

Lucien Biva first studied under his father, then enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, and the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts of Paris. At this time his professors included the poster designer Eugène Grasset (1845–1917). His education formed him as a painter but also as an interior designer and decorator.

He exhibited for the first time at the Salon des artistes français in 1902, with an entry titled Derniers rayons à Villeneuve-l’Étang, and exhibited there regularly until 1914. Other exhibition venues that saw his participation during this period included Salon des Indépendants in 1909.

During the month of August 1919, Lucien Biva left Le Havre aboard the transatlantic ocean liner Le Rochambeau. On the first of September he debarked in New York City where he would reside throughout the rest of his career.
Various reasons impelled Lucien Biva to emigrate to the United States. His father was a well-known painter, and it may have been difficult for Lucien Biva to make a name for himself without being linked to the work of his father.

In the press chroniclers speak of "the Biva's" assimilating the son behind the father, and tended to write of the Biva brothers, confusing in a single work that of Henri and Paul Biva. In 1903, the Bulletin de la Société des amis des arts du département de l'Eure Henry Chantraine evokes the Exposition des beaux-arts d’Evreux: "Passing in front of the Dahlias with its rich impasto and the Village, with violent tones, but already much more moderate [than those of Lucien Lamarre, mentioned above by the columnist] of MM. Henri and Lucien Biva [...]."

Lucien Biva's family nicknamed him "the anarchist", perhaps because he rejected part of the family pictorial legacy. In New York, when he exhibited at the Sixth Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, he was cited with other artists in the columns of New York Times (10 March 1922) as "stamped all over with the stamp of independence". It may be noted that the statement of the chronicler was somewhat tinged with irony. Since Society of Independent Artists created in 1916 was modeled after Société des Artistes Indépendants created in Paris in 1884, the author seems to have suggested this "independent" movement was already classical.

World War I had just ended, but his younger brother, jewelry designer Marius Biva, also formed at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, died at Verdun in 1915 at the age of 25 years.
Lucien Biva became an American citizen in 1928, residing mostly in New York City, Brooklyn, Queens, White Plains and Catskill. He painted and exhibited throughout the second leg of his career in the United States.

Between 1921 and 1949 Biva patented ornamental designs for textile fabrics and other articles of manufacture having surface ornamentation, patenting over eighty designs with the United States Patent Office.

At least one of Biva's designs, U.S. patent 59.177 of 1921, inspired other patents, such as U.S. patent 5,445,863, of 1995, used in clothing and other camouflage material for activities such as hunting and military maneuvers.

The early works of Lucien Biva are often difficult to distinguish from those of his father Henri Biva.

But when he left France in 1919, other artistic influences infused his style—Les Nabis, Art Nouveau and Fauvism—influences left over from his associations with artists at the Salon des Indépendants. With realism in his past, Biva's new work consisted of colorful landscapes, with certain titles of his paintings emphasizing the primacy given to colors.

Lucein Biva's work was shown in New York in the form of a retrospective exhibition, November 1957, at the Albany Institute of History & Art. Early works painted in France were juxtaposed with contemporary works painted in the United States, depicting a variety of places and subjects.

He died in New York, aged 87. See less