20世紀フランスの巨匠ミッシェル・アンリ　

Michel Henry, the 20th century French master

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Masters of 20th century French art

Michel Henry was born in 1928 in Langres, Burgundy, northwest of France. His father was a school teacher and his family was ordinary. He was interested in drawing from an early age and showed great talent. I heard from Michel Henry that he was given paints as a Christmas present. I also heard that the painting he painted at the age of four was already in the composition it is today. He painted a bouquet by the window and a landscape beyond the window.

 
 
 
 
 

Langres, where Michel Henry was born, was a fortified city built in Roman times.

More about Langres can be found on Michel Henry's museum blog.

 
 
 

<Autumn in Burgundy> Silk screen by Michel Henry

If you would like to purchase, please click on the image.

After graduating from high school, he enrolled in the Beaux-Arts (National School of Fine Arts) and the University of Paris at the same time. His parents were against him becoming a painter, so he also enrolled in the law faculty of the University of Paris. However, his talent was highly evaluated from an early age, and he won various awards while studying at the Beaux-Arts, and he studied abroad in Madrid and Amsterdam for long periods of time with scholarships from those awards, and he was also sent to Berlin as the representative of his class, so his parents must have been relieved. He dropped out of the law faculty of the University of Paris. When Michel Henry was in his first year at the Beaux-Arts, he was in a class with Bernard Buffet. His supervisor was a professor at Narbonne who placed importance on drawing. Both Michel Henry and Buffet acquired their drawing skills in this class. Buffet met Maurice Garnier, an art dealer in Matignon. He dropped out of the Beaux-Arts and made his debut as a professional painter, becoming a popular author. Michel Henry entered Chaplin Midi's class, which was renowned for its color skills, and became the representative of the class, where he acquired a solid color skill. While Buffet's paintings leaned toward drawing and were cartoon-like, Michel Henry had outstanding abilities in drawing, color, and composition.
 

"Picnic in Burgundy" Original silkscreen by Michel Henry

If you would like to purchase, please click on the image.

As an aside, do you know the famous French musician Serge Gainsbourg? He writes music with a punk-like atmosphere and sings it himself. He was born in 1928 and also enrolled at the Beaux-Arts to become a painter, but he didn't get any success and switched to music. His father was a piano player in bars and clubs. Many people don't know who Serge Gainsbourg is these days unless they are a big fan of France, but he married the top British actress Jane Birkin, and their daughter is the musician and actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. I think many young people today know Charlotte Gainsbourg. Like his father, he often sings light rock songs with a more monotonous combination of sounds than Merideale. He has played many unique roles in movies, and has even won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. However, I have never heard of Serge Gainsbourg from Michel Henry. Michel Henry was an honor student who was sent abroad as a student representative, with a neat dress code and polite manner and speech since his school days, while Gainsbourg was a decadent delinquent who wore tattered jeans and was constantly smoking rolled cigarettes, so the two men probably didn't have much in common.

 
 

Serge Gainsbourg and his wife Jane Birkin Serge Gainsbourg and his daughter Charlene

Lot Gainsbourg

Let's get back to painting. Both Michel Henry and Buffet were born in 1928 and entered the Beaux-Arts immediately after the end of World War II. At that time, films and other media depicted the destitute figures of the poor, in the style of Italian realism, and they resonated with people living in the poor and difficult times after the war. In the world of literature, French existentialist literature, such as that of Sartre and Camus, was a global trend. Existentialism tends to affirm people as they are rather than ideals or rules, and it positively portrayed the people at the bottom of society after the war. People who are sad tend to find healing in bright and cheerful atmospheres, and are soothed by music, art, and literature that are even darker than their own. It could be said that when your heart is minor, you prefer minor music. In line with this era, Bernard Buffet's sad paintings of dark landscapes painted with thick black lines, clowns, circus performers, and other such paintings resonated with people. Jean Janssen, an Armenian immigrant who studied painting at night school in Montparnasse, also became a painter of his time, using trembling, delicate lines to paint sad landscapes and images of poor people. I wrote that Buffet only studied drawing and dropped out of the Beaux-Arts, and although it is true that his paintings lack color, the poor, monotone colors fit the atmosphere of the time.
 

Bernard Buffet prints

 

After Buffet left the Beaux-Arts, Michel Henry finished his classes under Professor Narbonne and studied color in the class of Chaplain Midi, who was also an excellent colorist. Chaplain Midi also drilled color theory into Michel Henry, but he did not paint according to that theory. In normal painting theory, red is considered to have a dark color value . However, Michel Henry gave light to red, and succeeded by using red as a bright color value. When his supervisor Chaplain Midi saw Michel Henry's use of color, he said, "Michel Henry has surpassed me."

 

<Red Inspiration> Silkscreen by Michel Henry

Besides Buffet, there was another famous Beaux-Arts painter who was a contemporary of Michel Henry. Michel Henry was in Chaplain-Midi's class, which used strong colors, but the professor in charge of the class next door, Maurice Brianchon, was known for his soft colors, and Bernard Cathelin and André Brasilier studied in his class. Both of them painted with soft, blurry colors. Brasilier was born in 1929, the same generation as Michel Henry and Buffet. A little later, Jean-Pierre Cassigneul enrolled. Cassigneul also wanted to enroll in Chaplain-Midi's class, and Michel Henry was the examiner at that time. In other words, Cassigneul was a junior of Michel Henry, who enrolled with Michel Henry's permission. Until the 1980s, Cassignol painted in the same dull colors as Brasilier and others, but in the 1990s he moved closer to the intense colors of his predecessor Michel Henry.

 

"Golden Venice" Silkscreen by Michel Henry

If you would like to purchase, please click on the image

Everyone! Do you know the painting term "matière" (texture)? It is an important painting element along with drawing, color, composition, and touch. Matière is the impression that paint gives. I wrote that Buffet, a painter of the same generation as Michel Henry, is poor in color, but I think that Muffet, Brasilier, and Cassignol all lack matière. Or, you could say that their flat matière lacks the appeal of matière. Unlike watercolors and pastels, oil paints can give a three-dimensional feel. In other words, while watercolors and pastels are two-dimensional art, oil paintings can be expressed in three dimensions. Michel Henry is the only painter of his generation who is conscious of matière and paints highly complete paintings. The work below, "Transparent Red," allows you to feel the charm of the matière of Michel Henry's oil paintings. The irregular buildup of paint harmonizes with the colors to create a truly beautiful work.

From left: lithographs by Brasilier, Cassignol, and Catlan
 

"Transparent Red" Oil painting by Michel Henry

After that, he was sent to Berlin by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a representative of his class. After that, he won the Maison de Decarte Prize and studied abroad on a scholarship at the Maison de Decarte (House of Descartes) run by the French government in Amsterdam. Maison de Decarte (House of Descartes) is a French educational institution for nurturing advanced researchers and creators. When I was a student of sociology at the University of Montpellier, I chose Lucien Goldman, a Romanian immigrant philosopher who led the postwar French humanities society, as my research topic. He also studied at Maison de Decarte (House of Descartes) when he was young. In other words, it is clear that Michel Henry was on an elite course as a painter. After that, he won the Casa de Verazquez Prize and studied abroad at the Casa de Verazquez (House of Velazquez) in Madrid for about two years on a scholarship. This Casa de razquez (Velázquez House) was also established in 1916 as a French higher education school outside of France run by the French government with the aim of training advanced researchers and creators in science, humanities, music and art, and is still in operation today. Michel Henry is said to have spent some very enjoyable days of his youth here.

 

Exterior and interior photos of Casa de Velázquez

When I came back to Paris after a fun study abroad in Madrid, my friends had graduated, and while I felt lonely at the Beaux-Arts, I made a contract with the Galerie Romanée in Paris's high-end art gallery district and made my debut as a professional painter. Rue Matignon adjacent to the Elysée Palace (the presidential residence) is a high-end art gallery district. The street adjacent to the Elysée Palace, which intersects with Rue Matignon perpendicularly, is the famous Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where brand boutiques are gathered. Foreign presidents, prime ministers, and other important people also stay at hotels in this area, so luxury goods sell well. The Hotel Bristol, located right in front of the Elysée Palace, is famous. Michel Henry was a painter at this gallery on Rue Matignon for 60 years of his life.

After the Romanee Gallery closed, he became the painter of the Woley Findlay Gallery (an American gallery whose flagship store in New York is still open), and after Woley Findlay closed its Paris store, he became the painter for Etienne Sacy, Findlay's manager, and after Sacy moved to New York, he became the painter for the Alexandre Léodeur Gallery, whose flagship store is in Cannes. The Alexandre Léodeur Gallery is still in business today in the same location on Rue Matignon. Not far from Rue Matignon, along the Seine, is the Grand Palais, a famous Parisian landmark built for the purpose of exhibiting art. Let us introduce some of his works depicting the Grand Palais.

 

<Grand Palais> Original silkscreen by Michel Henry

If you would like to purchase, please click on the image.

If you leave the Grand Palais and go to the right, you will immediately reach the Seine. Once you cross the Alexander III Bridge, which is said to be the most magnificent bridge in Paris and is decorated with golden carvings, you will come to the Eiffel Tower.

<Eiffel Tower and Irises> Original silkscreen by Michel Henry

If you would like to purchase, please click on the image.

The Gallery Romanee immediately held an exhibition of Michel Henry's work. One afternoon, Michel Henry was walking down Rue Matignon to go to the Gallery Romanee, where his exhibition was being held, when he passed a very beautiful woman. Thinking that she was a woman he had seen before, he arrived at the Gallery Romanee, where Ms. Romanee said, "Greda Garbo has just bought your painting and has returned." Michel Henry remembered that the beautiful woman he had passed earlier was holding something that looked like a painting. He immediately ran outside, but was unable to find Greda Garbo . Come to think of it, Greda Garbo was famous as a collector of paintings.

 

Pont Neuf and Noble Dame

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