Jeune garçon à la tartine - Jeanne MALIVEL (1895-1926)

Jeanne MALIVEL 1895-1926

Drawing, engraving, painting, creating furniture and ornamental textiles, reinventing Breton crafts: between 1914 and 1926, her abundant work reveals an artist faithful to her roots, yet in tune with the aesthetic ferment of her time.

An artistic, social and feminist commitment

Born in Loudéac, in a small rural village in Brittany, into a family of enlightened merchants, Jeanne was fortunate enough to be able to pursue studies in which her talent for drawing became apparent at an early age. Supported by her family, at the age of 19 she prepared for and passed the entrance exam to the Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Unfortunately, the 1914 war hit Europe hard. Jeanne joined the hospital as a volunteer. In her rare moments of freedom, she continued to draw and took up engraving.

At the end of the war, in 1918, she took the Beaux-Arts competition again and ranked 4?. She then shared a studio in Montparnasse, a historic artists' district, with a master glassmaker and a sculptor. Imbued with this modern artistic effervescence, she participates in the Guilde de Notre-Dame and Maurice Denis' artists' workshops.

However, Jeanne suffered from homesickness and decided to return to Brittany, where she was appointed professor at the Beaux-Arts in Rennes. In 1917, she was impressed by the inspiring speech of the famous painter and engraver Maxime Maufra, who urged artists to commit themselves to the valorization of Breton artistic creation. From then on, much of her work was devoted to promoting Breton heritage.

She creates editions of engravings telling the story of Brittany, furniture and textiles. Her aim is to harmonize the shapes and colors of wood furnishings with paintings, wall decorations and drapery embroidery.

Ar Seiz Breur: a modern vision of Brittany

Jeanne helped found the Ar Seiz Breur ("Seven Brothers") movement, which combined the best of Breton tradition with new visions of modern art. This movement rejects the folk clichés distorted by burgeoning tourism.

Jeanne Malivel's breakthrough came in 1925, at the Exposition internationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris. The collective was awarded the decoration of the main hall, and Jeanne received the gold medal for her ceramics.

Despite a shortened career - she died aged just 31 - Jeanne Malivel continued to promote Brittany through her creations for the next ten years.

"My lifelong desire is to remain Breton, to work in my country on the art of my country."

Jeanne's experience at the hospital, where she sketched the soldiers over and over again, gave rise to a sharp, lively touch in her work, carried along by an acute brush. There's a certain grandeur, as well as a lyricism that blends sadness and hope.

During her stays in Paris, she also rubbed shoulders with artists from the English Arts and Crafts and German Bauhaus movements, who strove to bring art and craft closer together. This communion is reflected in her works, as in our picture, where the frame was designed by the artist herself.

This painting comes from the estate of cabinetmaker and sculptor Julien Bacon, with whom Jeanne worked at the Saint-Guénolé workshop in Caurel.

Period review:

"His painting is ardent, sincere and true, barely imprisoned by the concern to maintain the decorative character that befits his quasi-masculine disposition, the manifestations of his astonishing facility. [...]

we're a long way from the mawkish performances that our modern teenage daughters put together between a piano lesson and a sewing session, taking the trouble at most to glean, here and there, the biases that are necessary for the invasive snobbery of our times! (...)

And the imprecise poetry that emerges from Mlle Malivel's young talent is pleasing precisely because of its lack of troubled femininity and this vigour .