Robert Lapoujade - Venice - Sold

Color etching, hand signed, numbered (EA) and dated.
Image size 25 x 56 cm, paper size 48 x 73 cm.

Robert Lapoujade, painter, filmmaker, writer, self-taught and committed artist, was born on January 3, 1921 in Montauban (Tarn et Garonne).
He participated in numerous individual and collective exhibitions, in France and abroad (Marzotto Prize in 1967). His pictorial work is accompanied by writings and is interrupted during a period in which he explores the possibilities of cinema. His first exhibition took place in Montauban in 1939. In 1942 he moved to Paris, where he exhibited regularly from 1947. During this period his paintings, drawings, engravings and illustrations were essentially figurative.

The exhibition: “Pretext and formal painting” (1950 – Galerie Mai, Paris) marks a turning point in his work, with the transition to the informal. The years 1950-1971 were a period of pictorial effervescence, during which he also took part in the current debates on realism and abstraction. He presents numerous exhibitions on themes such as 'Hell and Mine', 'Eroticism and non-figuration', 'Riots'… There he shows his desire to give “meaning and significance” to his painting. Hiroshima, the deportation, the war in Algeria and May 1968... so many themes that led him to never separate his political commitment from his painting.

He also devotes himself to writing. In addition to numerous articles, he also published two essays and subsequently a novel. He was also a teacher at the Ecole de Vaugirard film school (Paris, 1968-1971). His first short film 'Enquête sur un corps' from 1959 marked the beginning of his cinematographic research as an extension of his activity as a painter. This film is in live action, the following films are mainly films intended to set paintings in motion. The ten animated films he has made use a wide variety of techniques: drawing, scraping film or painting directly under the camera, with the composition adjusted frame by frame.

From 1980 to 1986 he became a professor at the College of Decorative Arts (L'École supérieure des Arts Decoratifs). It was the time of his return to painting, which he had never completely given up. He exhibits in various galleries. In 1984 he was appointed Officer for Arts and Letters, an honor granted by the French Ministry of Culture.

After his death in 1993, two retrospectives were dedicated to him: in 1996 at the Ingres Museum in Montauban and in 1998 at the Gallery in Paris.