André Auclair, Cactus with Birds (circa 1960)

ANDRÉ AUCLAIR (Paris 1893 - Paris 1976) Cactus with Birds. Circa 1960. Oil on paper mounted on panel. Dimensions: 70.5 x 44 cm. Monogrammed lower right. Numbered and titled on the back: 24 Cactus with Birds. Very fine wooden frame. André Auclair, born in Paris in 1893, studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs and the École des Beaux-Arts. Like so many great artists, he pursued a dual career as a painter and a designer for the decorative arts. Auclair was a painter, sculptor, ceramist, printmaker, tapestry designer (his father had been a weaver at the Gobelins), and stained-glass designer. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was a member of the Société des Artistes Indépendants (Society of Independent Artists) and regularly exhibited his paintings and drawings at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon des Tuileries. He also taught painting at the École de Montparnasse. After the war, in 1953, Auclair settled in Saint-Thomé, a village in the Ardèche region of the Rhône Valley, 170 km south of Lyon. There, he established a workshop producing ceramics and decorative objects, while continuing to design for large commissions, notably tapestries and, above all, stained glass. As an artist, Auclair never stopped developing, and his stained glass designs from the 1960s are among the most powerful modernist creations of this period. In this later period, Auclair continued to produce many beautiful drawings and paintings, and Cactus aux Oiseaux, depicting the Mediterranean Sea seen from a balcony, is a late work by Auclair dating from around 1960. The colors are rich and fresh, and it is painted with complete mastery, including some wonderful impasto passages. A museum dedicated to Auclair, the Centre d’Art et d’Histoire André Auclair, opened in Cruas, a town on the banks of the Rhône, a little north of Saint-Thomé, in 1987.