| By a happy encounter, the exhibitions of two painters close relatives by trends and who are among the most remarkable of their generation, are open at the same time. At Miss Weill's, Mr. Pierre Girieud submits to the public two models of frescoes, his own portrait and around thirty landscapes executed in Provence last summer. Mr. Alfred Lombard at the Druet gallery presents a larger collection (....)
These two painters, who have passed their forties, are at the full maturity of their talent. The pleasure they provide today is that which conveys confidence, harmony, the quiet possession of measured force means, which nevertheless retains all the flavor of audacity. There are artists whose most beautiful moment is youth; is that the best of themselves is spontaneity; they lose it by gaining strength. Mr. Girieud and Mr. Lombard seem rather to be of these balanced and thoughtful natures, which are perfectly realized at the moment when intelligence has all its empire, when acquired culture has the most wealth and real life. This is, no doubt, because they have an inherently Latin genius. They are both Provençaux. One can believe that they owe to this origin, to the contemplation of the native landscapes the natural clarity of the spirit and the vision, the sense of broad, simple and strong rhythms, the serenity, with I know not what familiar nobility. I regret that you cannot see the self-portrait of Mr. Girieud who welcomes the visitor to Ms. Weill's shop, a portrait dedicated to his friend Alfred Lombard. It is voluntary to the point of hardness, of an intense exception as well as sober; it is the effigy of a Roman emperor or a Mussolini which would not be declamatory. Such a man may be born in a time of disarray where, in the words of Gustave Moreau "all that is good is missed", he must fatally achieve a kind of classicism. He tends towards it with all his being. We can say today that it has reached it.
He understood the lesson of his country. Didn't he say lately the beauty of the Aix region, of the Sainte-Victoire dear to Cézanne and of these "plains rich with the best wheats in the world, dominated by these beautiful lines of mountains where order and measure taught by the Greeks and Romans ". I quote this text from Mr. Girieud because it gives the most accurate impression of his present exhibition. - Order and measure. And, by force of order and measure, full knowledge and self-possession, gentleness, delicacy and tenderness even in strength, equality of talent, simplicity of means.
Mr. Girieud trained himself. He started from Gauguin, from symbolism, from partitioning. He kept the main decorative parts. But little by little, especially since the war, the influence of Cézanne has prevailed over that of the master of Pont Aven, researches of modeling have preoccupied the artist, and the suggestions, more lively, more direct, more true to nature has attenuated until it almost disappears, the arbitrariness of the first stylizations. |