| The neo-traditionalism of Pierre Girieud, his sense of style, the austerity of his design make it easy to establish the degree of kinship that unites him to the main authors of our decorative renaissance. After this artist had left naturalism, in order to escape the too servile imitation of reality, he forced himself to another discipline so severe that his canvases and drawings dating from that time involved a Byzantine aesthetic. It is also noteworthy that the reaction against the Italian decadence to which the School of Fine Arts testifies an attachment, which has not been denied, was operated by painters loving different degrees of primitivism: Paul Gauguin, Serusier, Maurice Denis. It seems that to restore to the visual arts that rhythm that since the death of the neo-Roman school (read: classical school) has always been lacking or believed to have to draw a lesson from the Egyptian, Greek, archaic and medieval sources of the painting , said Maurice Denis, is a flat surface covered with colors in a certain order assembled. All our decorators, inspired by this principle, have been able to print a new direction to the ornamental painting. To the magnificence of the Romantics, whose role was to react against the cold, conventional and objective academism of David's students, succeeded an art tightening closer reality but governed by laws of rhythm and balance of obedience on which depends the vitality and value of most works. Is it only necessary to point out the influence exerted on Oriental spirits in general and the Persian miniaturists in particular?
Pierre Girieud was quick to shake the yoke of some masters too urgent. His exhibition at Rosenberg (in 1914) showed us already an artist in possession of all his means. Projects of vast compositions, sites populated with characters draped in the antique style, barely stylized nudes proved from the exhibitor the firm will to rid once again the French decorative painting of this Italianism that has not little contributed to his corruption. Since then, in the art of landscape he has not stopped perfecting himself. The spirit and the material of his most recent paintings mark a big step forward in the evolution of the artist. Pierre Girieud claims to reach and attains general harmony and follows in the footsteps of these two great workers of the French tradition named Nicolas Poussin and Paul Cézanne. |