Home > ArtoftheDay Weekly > #491 - from 16 November 2017 to 22 November 2017 > Pougheon, Art Déco with a touch of Ingres

Art Of The Day Weekly

#491 - from 16 November 2017 to 22 November 2017


David Hockney, Barry Humphries, 26th, 27th, 28th March 2015, acrylic on canvas (one of an 82-part work), 121.92 x 91.44 cm © David Hockney Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt.

EXHIBITIONS

Pougheon, Art Déco with a touch of Ingres

ROUBAIX - The musée de la Piscine, which is undergoing an enlargement of its space that will end in the fall of 2018, has become a specialist in rediscovering unknown artists from the first half of the 19th century. This time the needle has hit on Robert Pougheon (1886-1955). Only a few, rare admirers remember he left a composition in the ballroom of the town hall of the 14th arrondissement in Paris, stained glass windows in the church of the Saint-Esprit, in the X12th arrondissement, that he participated in the decoration of the ocean liner Ile-de-France, and that he signed certain bank notes in the 1950s. One single painting, the best known, is presented, the enigmatic Serpent. It is used as an introduction to this exhibition that enhances the value of the museum’s collection. Indeed, it holds more than 1,000 drawings by the artist. His work to simplify forms merges influences that are as varied as Mannerism, Ingres, and Art Déco, to present its main subject. Her it is the naked woman, whether virgin or amazon, with breasts round and placed high on the torso, a stylized face, the body out of balance in a systematic contrapposto. Pougheon had many facets, not all of them very attractive. He was the director of Villa Medici in 1942 when it was moved to Nice, and he accepted an order for a tapestry dedicated to the glory of Pétain (although he was never considered as a collaborationist). The artist is emblematic of that scholarly painting, typical of the period between the two world wars, decorative and colorful, with clues and mysteries, based on a perfect knowledge of drawing. We now await a complete retrospective!
, at the Piscine, from 14 October 2017 to 7 January 2018. Catalogue Gourcuff-Gradenigo, €35.

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