Pierre Deval
Encyclopedia
Pierre Deval was a French figurative
painter of the 20th century, noted as a colorist and for his subtle paintings of women and children. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Domaine d'Orvès
, his house at La Valette-du-Var
, was a gathering place for French artists who worked along the Côte d'Azur and in Provence
.
and the Louvre
. He also frequented the musee Saint Pierre in Lyon
, where he was deeply impressed by the drawings and sculpture of Auguste Rodin
, and visited the Institute of Archeology, where he saw the reproductions of Greco-Latin statues and developed a passion for Greek and Roman myths, which was to play a large part in his later work.
In 1914, at the beach at LeBaule, he became friends with Rene Chomette, who became famous much later as a film director under the pseudonym of René Clair
. The two boys began a long friendship and corresponded frequently about their discoveries in art. At the age of 14, Deval was particularly impressed by the exoticism of the colors, sets and costumes of the Ballets Russes
, which visited Lyon.
and Lucien Simon. Deval had his first show of drawings, portraits of young women, at the Lyon salon of 1918. In 1921, he became a friend of the French surrealist poet Jacques Rigaut
, who introduced him into the circle of the Dadaism, and of Tristan Tzara
, and writers André Breton
and Louis Aragon
. He briefly edited an artistic review in Lyon between February 1921 and June 1922. At the 1921 Salon d’Automne in Paris he had his first success with the painting Ariane, a realistic painting of the back of a woman lying on her side, looking at a cityscape, which was purchased by the French Government for the Musee Luxembourg, and hung in the Jeu de Pomme. Other painters in the salon that year included Henri Matisse
, Claude Monet
, Pierre Bonnard
, Paul Gauguin
, Roussel and Cross.
In the autumn of 1922, the success of his painting Ariadne earned him a two year fellowship at the Villa Abd-el-Tif in Algiers, a residence for painters. He was 25. He had become disenchanted with the Dada group and began looking for a new style of his own. In Algeria he encountered fauvist Albert Marquet
, twenty-two years older, and became a friend of that painter. He also met his future wife, Henriette Bergerat, in February 1923, and they lived together in the villa. His paintings ranged from landscapes of Algiers and scenes of Algerian women preparing to bathe and dressing, to ventures in modernism.
In 1924 he was selected to participate in the Venice Biennale
, with a group of French artists that included Albert Marquet, Pierre Bonnard, and Maurice Denis
. His works of this period featured exotic scenes from Algeria, and odalisques, as well as cityscapes of Algiers. His modernist paintings and drawings of blacks and whites together were condemned by traditional critics as too radical, while his other paintings were condemned by modernist critics as too traditional.
When his fellowship ended he returned to Paris and moved into the studio at 19 quai St. Michel which Matisse had just vacated. He experimented with different styles, and in 1926 he painted five watercolors of modern Parisian life for a book L’ecole des indifferents’ by Jean Giraudoux
. He worked as an illustrator for several journals, and showed his work in Paris galleries.
, and the painters Raoul Dufy
, Marquet, Jean Puy
and Willy Eisenschitz. In the years that followed he painted realistic scenes of Marseille and Toulon, and sensitive paintings of women, children and families. He took part in a show in Marseille in 1933 on Provence seen by painters.
During World War II, he saw his home occupied by a German artillery unit, who cut down most of the trees to have a clear view for their guns. He was finally able to return to his house in 1944. After the war he ran into trouble with the French Communist Party, who dominated the Paris art world, when he did not sign a petition opposing the re-armament of Germany, saying that he was an artist and he preferred to sign only paintings. Thereafter he showed his work mostly at galleries in Provence.
He died at his house in LaVallet-du-Var in 1993, little known by the public, but respected by his fellow artists in Provence.
Figurative art
Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...
painter of the 20th century, noted as a colorist and for his subtle paintings of women and children. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Domaine d'Orvès
Domaine d'Orvès
The Domaine d'Orvès is an arboretum and Provençal garden surrounding an 18th century bastide located in the commune of La Valette du Var in the Var department of France. It is classified by the French Ministry of Culture as one of the Notable Gardens of France...
, his house at La Valette-du-Var
La Valette-du-Var
La Valette-du-Var is a commune in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.- Celebrity connection :...
, was a gathering place for French artists who worked along the Côte d'Azur and in Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
.
Youth and Education
Pierre Jean Charles Deval was born August 20, 1897 in Lyon, the third child of a silk merchant, Gustave Deval (1853–1943). Pierre was of fragile health, and his parents took him frequently to the countryside or beach resorts for rest and a change of air, or to Paris to visit the galleries of the Luxembourg PalaceLuxembourg Palace
The Luxembourg Palace in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, north of the Luxembourg Garden , is the seat of the French Senate.The formal Luxembourg Garden presents a 25-hectare green parterre of gravel and lawn populated with statues and provided with large basins of water where children sail model...
and the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
. He also frequented the musee Saint Pierre in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
, where he was deeply impressed by the drawings and sculpture of Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
, and visited the Institute of Archeology, where he saw the reproductions of Greco-Latin statues and developed a passion for Greek and Roman myths, which was to play a large part in his later work.
In 1914, at the beach at LeBaule, he became friends with Rene Chomette, who became famous much later as a film director under the pseudonym of René Clair
René Clair
René Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...
. The two boys began a long friendship and corresponded frequently about their discoveries in art. At the age of 14, Deval was particularly impressed by the exoticism of the colors, sets and costumes of the Ballets Russes
Ballets Russes
The Ballets Russes was an itinerant ballet company from Russia which performed between 1909 and 1929 in many countries. Directed by Sergei Diaghilev, it is regarded as the greatest ballet company of the 20th century. Many of its dancers originated from the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg...
, which visited Lyon.
Career as an artist
He began to study art seriously in Paris as student of painter Émile-René MénardÉmile-René Ménard
Émile-René Ménard was a French painter born in Paris. From early childhood he was immersed in an artistic environment: Corot, Millet and the Barbizon painters frequented his family home, familiarizing him thus with both landscape and antique subjects.Ménard studied at the Academy Jullian from...
and Lucien Simon. Deval had his first show of drawings, portraits of young women, at the Lyon salon of 1918. In 1921, he became a friend of the French surrealist poet Jacques Rigaut
Jacques Rigaut
Jacques Rigaut was a French surrealist poet. Born in Paris, he was part of the Dadaist movement. His works frequently talked about suicide and he came to regard its successful completion as his occupation...
, who introduced him into the circle of the Dadaism, and of Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
, and writers André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
and Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...
. He briefly edited an artistic review in Lyon between February 1921 and June 1922. At the 1921 Salon d’Automne in Paris he had his first success with the painting Ariane, a realistic painting of the back of a woman lying on her side, looking at a cityscape, which was purchased by the French Government for the Musee Luxembourg, and hung in the Jeu de Pomme. Other painters in the salon that year included Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...
, Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
, Roussel and Cross.
In the autumn of 1922, the success of his painting Ariadne earned him a two year fellowship at the Villa Abd-el-Tif in Algiers, a residence for painters. He was 25. He had become disenchanted with the Dada group and began looking for a new style of his own. In Algeria he encountered fauvist Albert Marquet
Albert Marquet
Albert Marquet was a French painter, associated with the Fauvist movement.-Life and work:Marquet was born in 1875 at Bordeaux. In 1890 he moved to Paris to attend the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, where he met Henri Matisse. They were roommates for a time, and they influenced each other's work...
, twenty-two years older, and became a friend of that painter. He also met his future wife, Henriette Bergerat, in February 1923, and they lived together in the villa. His paintings ranged from landscapes of Algiers and scenes of Algerian women preparing to bathe and dressing, to ventures in modernism.
In 1924 he was selected to participate in the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, with a group of French artists that included Albert Marquet, Pierre Bonnard, and Maurice Denis
Maurice Denis
Maurice Denis was a French painter and writer, and a member of the Symbolist and Les Nabis movements. His theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art.-Childhood and education:...
. His works of this period featured exotic scenes from Algeria, and odalisques, as well as cityscapes of Algiers. His modernist paintings and drawings of blacks and whites together were condemned by traditional critics as too radical, while his other paintings were condemned by modernist critics as too traditional.
When his fellowship ended he returned to Paris and moved into the studio at 19 quai St. Michel which Matisse had just vacated. He experimented with different styles, and in 1926 he painted five watercolors of modern Parisian life for a book L’ecole des indifferents’ by Jean Giraudoux
Jean Giraudoux
Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...
. He worked as an illustrator for several journals, and showed his work in Paris galleries.
Deval in Provence
In 1925 he decided to move to the South of France, and purchased a 17th century bastide at Valette-du-Gard,near Hyeres. He installed his studio on the first floor and painted murals of mythological scenes on the walls of the dining room and entry hall. He welcomed to his house other artists who had moved to Provence, including writer and poet Henri BoscoHenri Bosco
Henri Bosco was a French writer.Bosco was born in Avignon, Vaucluse into a family of Piedmontese origin. Through his father, he was related to Saint John Bosco, of whom he wrote a biography. His novels for adults and children provide a sensitive evocation of Provençal life...
, and the painters Raoul Dufy
Raoul Dufy
Raoul Dufy[p] was a French Fauvist painter. He developed a colorful, decorative style that became fashionable for designs of ceramics and textiles, as well as decorative schemes for public buildings. He is noted for scenes of open-air social events...
, Marquet, Jean Puy
Jean Puy
Jean Puy was a French Fauvist artist. He studied architecture in Lyon and painting with Jean-Paul Laurens at l'Académie Julian between 1897 and 1898. He met Henri Matisse and other like-minded artists when he transferred to the l'Academie Carriere in 1899...
and Willy Eisenschitz. In the years that followed he painted realistic scenes of Marseille and Toulon, and sensitive paintings of women, children and families. He took part in a show in Marseille in 1933 on Provence seen by painters.
During World War II, he saw his home occupied by a German artillery unit, who cut down most of the trees to have a clear view for their guns. He was finally able to return to his house in 1944. After the war he ran into trouble with the French Communist Party, who dominated the Paris art world, when he did not sign a petition opposing the re-armament of Germany, saying that he was an artist and he preferred to sign only paintings. Thereafter he showed his work mostly at galleries in Provence.
He died at his house in LaVallet-du-Var in 1993, little known by the public, but respected by his fellow artists in Provence.
Paintings by Deval in Museum Collections
- Musée National des Beaux Arts in AlgiersAlgiers' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
- Musée Ahmed ZabanaAhmed ZabanaAhmed Zabana , was born in 1926 in Zahana about 32 km far from Oran....
in OranOranOran is a major city on the northwestern Mediterranean coast of Algeria, and the second largest city of the country.It is the capital of the Oran Province . The city has a population of 759,645 , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1,500,000, making it the second largest... - National Museum in Tokyo
- British MuseumBritish MuseumThe British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
in London