Paintings

Lucien Genin

Lucien Genin was born in 1894, and beginning in 1914, he followed the teaching of the School of Fine Arts in Rouen. His teachers were Alphonse and Albert Guilloux. In the same workshop were Alfred Dunet and Michel Fréchon, two future names of the School of Rouen. Lucien Genin was talented and the most fortunate gifted students were offered admission to a Parisian school. He left Rouen and enrolled at the Arts Déco, rue de l'École-de-Médecine. He attended evening classes in sculpture, architectural composition and mathematics. More than a painter of Paris, Genin was a painter of Parisians. In November 1929, André Warnod wrote of his painting: "Lucien Genin describes Paris with a sometimes hasty ardour but with a pleasant taste for bright colours". He was an intelligent, composed, colourful, sensitive, skilful, delicate, humorous and funny painter. A painting by Lucien Genin won the Art Institute of Chicago prize in 1932. In 1947, he left one last time for Cassis and exhibited on his return to the Bernard gallery. He did not leave the Beaux-Arts district anymore. He painted there in his room dreamlike landscapes on his easel under the window, where Robert Doisneau visited him a few weeks before his death. A retrospective exhibition was organised at the Galerie de Seine from 21 May to 4 June 1954.