PIERRE HENRY est né à Paris, en 1924 – Décédé en 2015
A l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris il étudie peinture, fresque et gravure. Logiste pour le grand Prix de Rome.
Extrait biographique, par LYDIA HARAMBOURG, Historienne de l’Art
Une ferveur silencieuse imprègne tout l’œuvre de Pierre Henry. Nous sommes devant un monde clos, dont la dimension poétique stimule un imaginaire débusqué au fil des jours et dans lequel l’artiste avance à visage découvert. Le peintre et le poète ont en partage l’intuitive révélation de leurs forces, de leur faculté créatrice pour rendre évidente et visible une réalité, celle d’une vérité intérieure que seul l’art permet de cerner. Le réel et son double, le rêve, tissent des fils jusqu’à la saillie de l’insaisissable. L’acuité est une arme comme l’est l’introspection pour celui qui devient le voyant d’une révélation inlassablement reconduite.
Le poids intrinsèque des images, Pierre Henry l’expérimente alors qu’adolescent, il dessine dans l’arrière-boutique de la boulangerie paternelle. Un jour, un homme d’une haute stature demande à voir ses dessins. Martin Roch est un voisin, il habite un ancien couvent désaffecté rue Saint-Denis où il peint, écrit, quand il ne reçoit pas Gertrude Stein, Blaise Cendrars. Son flair infaillible et son jugement aussi instinctif, disputé par un regard qui ne l’est pas moins, lui a fait déceler André Marchand, Tal Coat, Guignebert. Grâce à lui, le jeune Pierre Henry entrouvre un monde où la liberté prend un sens insoupçonné jusqu’alors, par celui qui découvre, sous l’apparente insouciance mais d’une non moins provocante démarche, une aire où puisse se délivrer ce qu’il est encore loin de mesurer, l’émergence d’un langage artistique. Le sien, nourri de son existence et de son environnement, sources fondamentales d’inspiration pour en laisser éclore une œuvre.
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
PIERRE-HENRY
Biographie
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