Ceysson & Bénétière

Ceysson & Bénétière is very pleased to announce its participation in the 2024 edition of TEFAF Maastricht with a solo show dedicated to Roger Bissière.

Booth 701

Bissière first studied in Bordeaux and then in Paris in 1909, where he became friends with Georges Braque and André Lhote. His works were presented in the early exhibitions of the Parisian avant-garde, notably at the Salon d’Automne. After the war, Bissière became a key member of the new School of Paris and developed a cubist approach in which the human figure was never absent, although he moved towards abstraction. This direction resulted from both the influence of Picasso's neoclassicism as well as his own research on the heritage of cubism. Despite intentionally staying away from official art circles and living in the French Lot department, Bissière never disconnected from the art scene. He was not only an artist but also one of the most prominent art critics of his time. He wrote for the newspaper L’Opinion and contributed to the first monographic book on Braque.

Bissière had an unbreakable friendship with Jean-François Jaeger, and the two friends constantly exchanged ideas about art. Bissière’s exhibition Quelques images sans titre held in 1951 was a cornerstone both in the history of Jaeger’s gallery and in the painter's career. The audience enthusiastically discovered his paintings composed of colorful marks, creating a space of sounds in the characteristic muted tones of the tempera technique common in the Middle Ages. Bissière returned to oil painting in 1956, and enjoyed about a dozen solo exhibitions at Jaeger’s gallery. His work has been widely promoted in France and abroad. Thanks to Jean-François Jaeger, over sixty of his masterpieces are on display in the most prominent European institutions. The last exhibition during the painter's lifetime, held in 1964 – a few days before the Venice Biennale where he received a citation of merit – was entitled Journal en images, and presented a series of around fifty small particleboard panels created after the death of his wife, Mousse. Bissière's work has been included in numerous exhibitions and is now part of international museum collections.

"My first cubist revelation dates back to my meeting with Braque, in 1919-1920, and the friendship that followed. At that moment of my youth, I glimpsed new possibilities and a completely new vision. This discovery led me to abandon an immediate and realistic view of the world for a transposition of nature transformed into mere pictorial fact. I found satisfaction in the need for rigorous construction and composition of the painting. [...] The impressionist expresses his sensation. The cubist gives his opinion. Understanding is enough to be able to recreate. [...] When I start a canvas, I only have a sensation of color, an emotion, that's all. Once the first color is applied, it calls for another, and another, and all these colors come together end up suggesting forms. I just have to follow them. I only ensure to fill the gaps and give great density to the whole... All the love put into a painting can be felt."

Roger Bissière in Baptiste-Marreyn, Bissière T’en fais pas Marie, écrits sur la peinture 1945-1964, Le temps qu’il fait, Cognac, 1994 (Ma première révélation du cubisme, statement reported by Pierre Cabanne in L’Epopée du Cubisme).