Henri LACHIEZE-REY (1927 - 1974) Countryside near Saint-Tropez (1960)

Henri Lachièze-Rey studied first at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His painting is in line with Impressionism and shows great sensitivity in the suggestion of diffused light. He also worked on impasto and deformation, but without resorting to the violence of expressionism.

He exhibited in Lyon, Cannes and Paris, and became a member of the Salon d'Automne. He also exhibited at the Salon des Peintres Témoins de leur Temps and at the Menton Biennial on several occasions, where he received a prize in 1959. A retrospective of his work was organized in 2003 at the Paul Dini Museum in Villefranche-sur-Saône.

He was the son of the philosopher and Professor Pierre Lachièze-Rey and his mother came from a family of industrialists from Lyon. At first, his friends claimed that his parents did not like their son to pursue a career as a painter, and that this changed when they realized that he was considered a valuable artist.

From 1946 to 1950, he was first a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and then extended his studies until 1952 at the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1949, he won the Prix de Paris, then in 1954-55, thanks to the prize of the Mediterranean Union of Modern Arts, he stayed at the Villa Zoé in Nice with his friend Georges Adilon. In 1957, he married the ceramist Jeanne Charpe. He then lived in Saint-Tropez, then in Tuscany in 1959.


Back in France, from 1961 to 1974, he settled in Saint-Romain-du-Mont d'Or and worked with Adilon and his Sanzist friends, the painters Cottavoz, Fusaro, and Truphémus. His first solo exhibition took place in 1956 at the town hall of Douvaine. His works were then presented in Paris at the Cartier Gallery and, in Lausanne, in 1965, 1970 and 1972 at the Entracte Gallery. Other exhibitions will take place in Lyon in the Saint-Georges and Bellecour galleries and also in Annecy, Cannes, Toulouse and and New-York, at the Franck Partidge gallery, which specialises in French figurative painting from this period.

Alas, this brilliant career was brutally shattered. Henri Lachièze-Rey died accidentally, hit by a car in Lyon, on July 14, 1974. Since then, he has occupied a special position between martyrdom and mystery, without escaping the strange disaffection surrounding the entire Sanzist group in Lyon.

Many of the painter's works are in private collections. However, some are present in the United States in a Museum of Fine Arts in Nice, the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse and the Paul Dini Museum in Villefranche-sur-Saône.

=> Henri Lachièze-Rey, Campagne près de Saint-Tropez (Var), 1960, oil on canvas, 60 cm x 92 cm, signed and dated lower right and titled on the back on a label.

=> Provenance: Gallery 65, Cannes (label on the back). Beautiful modern frame made of an American oak box. Cleaned and refinished in 2023. The retrospective dedicated to the painter at the Paul Dini Museum was part of the project. Listed in the archives for the preparation of the Catalogue Raisonné.