Artists

André Brasilier

French, born 1929

André Brasilier was born into an artistic family in Saumur, France in 1929.

Possessing a natural inclination for painting at an early age, he went to Paris to study at the École de Beaux-Arts when he was twenty years old. In 1952 Brasilier received a grant from the Florence Blumenthal Foundation. The following year when he was only 23, Brasilier won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome which entitled him to study at the Académie de France in Rome. He lived at the Villa de Medicis from 1954 to 1957. He also received the Prix Charles-Morellet at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture in 1961 and the Prix de Villeneuve-sur-Lot in 1962.

While Brasilier’s works reflect the influences of expressionist artists and Japanese prints, he has retained a personal style of schematized nature and imagery that makes him anomaly in the contemporary zeitgeist. His subdued paintings often feature themes and motifs of horses, nature, music and women, provocative in their timelessness and emotional subjectivity. One of Brasilier’s main subjects included his wife, the muse he has loved his entire life and that he depicts as his constant source of inspiration.

Another reoccurring subject of Brasilier is the horse, which he has admired and loved since he was a little boy. Set against the most simplistic and romantic backgrounds, the artist effortlessly transports us into surreal landscapes, lightening the soul with dreamy infusions of figures set in modest hues of color, shape and form. In an intimate communion with nature, Brasilier draws his inspiration from its language, sounds and colors, reminding us of a natural beauty untouched by daily trivialities and events.

Brasilier’s paintings depict a peaceful, comfortable world, free from care, in a very simple, stylish manner, with delicate harmonies bathed in accommodating sunlight. Brasilier had his first retrospective of one hundred artworks from 1950-1980 at the Château de Chenonceau in 1980 and a retrospective exhibition at the Musée Picasso-Château Grimaldi in Antibes, the French Riviera, in 1988. He has since been honored with major retrospectives both at Russia’s renowned State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg in 2005 and at the Museum Haus Ludwig für Kunstausstellungen Saarlois in Germany in 2007.

Literature: Xavier de Coulanges, Andre Brasilier; Catalogue Raisonne 1982 - 2002, Lousanne, Acatos, 2002, vol. 1, P.26 No 1982/51