Jean Rene Bazaine
Born Paris, 21 Dec 1904; Died Clanmart, 4 March 2001.
French painter and writer. He studied under the French sculptor Paul Maximilien Landowski (b 1875) at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the same time he studied for a degree in literature at the Sorbonne. In 1924 he made two trips to Italy and there began to paint. He first exhibited in 1930 at a group show at the Galerie Jeanne Castel in Paris where the other artists included Jean Fautrier, Jean Pougny and Marcel Gromaire. Two years later he had his first one-man show at the Galerie Van Leer in Paris where he met Bonnard, who advised and encouraged him. Also in 1932 he began his work on the review Esprit and he later contributed art criticism to Temps Présent and Poésie 43.
In 1934 Bazaine had his first watercolour exhibition at the Galerie Van Leer in Paris. In 1936 he made his first visit to Saint-Guénolé in Brittany, a place to which he returned each year. These visits resulted in such works as Saint-Guénolé (1959; Høvikodden, Henies & Onstads Stift., see Tardieu, Schneider and Bosson, pl. 103). At the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris (1937), Marcel Gromaire invited Bazaine to participate in the exhibition L’Art indépendant: Maîtres d’aujourd’hui at the Petit Palais. The same year he met Jacques Villon and made his first stained-glass window, the Instruments of the Passion, for a private chapel. In 1938 he won the Blumenthal prize for painting. His figurative work of the pre-war period, such as Glasses and Boxes (1937; Grenoble, Mus. Peint. & Sculp.), was solidly modelled. From World War II he moved towards abstraction.
From 1939 to 1940 Bazaine was mobilized in Lorraine. In 1941 he helped to organize the first modern art exhibition in occupied Paris, without German authorization. Its title, Vingt jeunes peintres de tradition française, was designed to conceal its avant-garde nature. From 1942 to 1947 he exhibited with Maurice Estève and Charles Lapicque at the Galerie Louis Carré. During this period he employed a geometric armature in his painting, derived from Cubism, as in Walker and Nude on Balcony (1945; Hamburg, Ksthalle). In 1948 he published Notes sur la peinture d’aujourd’hui, in which he attempted to dissolve the traditionally rigid duality between figurative and abstract art—a particularly acute problem in relation to his work. From 1947 to 1955 he produced more abstract paintings, such as the Child and the Night (1949; Paris, Pompidou).
In 1951 Bazaine made the first mosaic for the façade of the church at Audincourt and the following year provided costume and scene designs for Janine Charrat’s ballet Massacre des Amazones. Later mosaics included those for UNESCO (1960) and for the Maison de l’ORTF (1963), both in Paris. He made the first of several trips to Zeeland in the Netherlands in 1956, returning there every summer until 1958. As at Saint-Guénolé he was attracted by the sea and produced works such as Zeeland (1957; Paris, Gal. Maeght, see Tardieu, Schneider and Bosson, pl. 85). Lacking the geometric appearance of the preceding works, the diffuse colour of this painting showed the influence of Monet. The same style pervaded the works of the 1960s, such as Between Stone and Water (1964; Paris, Pompidou). In 1964 Bazaine was awarded the Grand Prix National des Arts. Between 1964 and 1970 he created a series of stained-glass windows for St Séverin, Paris. His later canvases continued the preceding style using larger, more fused brushstrokes, as in the Songs of the Dawn III (1985; priv. col., see 1987 exh. cat., pl. 43).
"Bazaine, Jean." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T007057 (accessed March 8, 2012).
