Michel Margueray

See Michel Margrey's works here

Michel Margrey

Michel Margrey

Michel Margrey is a French landscape painter born in 1938 in Normandy, northwestern France. He started painting in his childhood and developed his artistic sensibility amidst the rich nature of Normandy.

He was strongly influenced by Impressionist painters Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro, establishing a style that depicts everyday landscapes with classical composition and Impressionistic bright light and colors. His works, expressed with delicate brushwork and a sure sense of color, convey the light and air of nature, and a quiet poetic sentiment.

Margrey's paintings are often described as expressions of "eternally happy moments." In his works, everything is enveloped in soft light, and the gentle emotions found in nature are delicately depicted. Forest paths, seasides, and street corners evoke a pleasant feeling, as if strolling on a summer day, inviting viewers into a quiet dream world.

His works are highly regarded as figurative paintings that inherit the tradition of French art, creating unique clear canvases through the beauty of their form, flowing tones, and accents of color. The carefully rendered surfaces, down to their textures, convey a poetic world full of color, even while depicting real landscapes.

Margrey has held many solo exhibitions in France and abroad, achieving success in galleries around Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, known as one of Europe's leading high-end art gallery districts, becoming one of the most popular landscape painters in the French art world.

He is also active as a member of major French art organizations, the Société des Artistes Français (Society of French Artists) and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (National Society of Fine Arts).

Awards

1988: Awarded by the Society of French Artists
2006: Special Award for Arts, Sciences, and Culture

Solo Exhibitions

  • Sutton Gallery (USA)

  • Phoenix Gallery (USA)

  • Helleu Gallery (Paris)

  • Galerie Comparaison (Paris)

  • Galerie Boudin (Rouen)

  • Galerie Hamon (Le Havre)

  • Galerie Lographe (Nancy)

Univers des arts, April 2009

Margrey: The understated charm of landscape painting

Margrey's work is not just a narrative of paintings. It is also a story of journeys and returns to places important to him. The existence of the places he loves characterizes his art and its uniqueness. He needs to visit cities, fields, and ports. He needs to go to the subject's location, confront the landscape, and feel the colors, nuances, light, and scents. This attitude is the source of his original creativity. Whether it's Venice, Saint-Briac, Menton, or Honfleur, his vitality and style of figurative painting remain constant. To express what he feels is to convey the emotion that the beauty of nature gives him onto the canvas. With precise and sensitive touches, he gently and delicately brings out the subject. One can feel the love for that landscape. This deep affection for his favorite themes is also a testament to his intimate dialogue with nature. Margrey is an outstanding landscape painter, knowing all about the white attire of snow, the tenderness of silence, and the hues of twilight. He wanders through lavender fields, wildlands, and their paths, trying to capture the atmosphere. He tries to capture on canvas the delicate and warm atmosphere, the wild harmony emitted by the sky and hills, beaches and villages. The figures that appear in Margrey's paintings are drawn in appropriate proportions, giving warmth to the landscape, but there is no doubt that the sea, boats, trees, and houses are still the main themes.Author: Françoise Séligan



Univers des arts, Summer 2005 issue

Michel Margrey: Clear Light

Michel Margrey's choice is as clear as a summer sky. That choice is to depict nature in its clarity. However, the radiant colors of poppies and the pure white of snowscapes, due to their transience, convey the painter's desire to preserve them on canvas forever. The charm of our planet is depicted so vividly that one is surprised not to have noticed this miraculous beauty before.

With his talent, Margrey makes us gaze at what we see but do not truly perceive. The painter tells us how wonderful it is to breathe the scent of flowers, to feel the pleasant wind rustling the sails of a yacht, and to gaze at the shimmering surface of the sea.

Margrey is surrounded by rich everyday landscapes, which he expresses in detail and harmony. With a delicate and precise touch, the painter knows how to accurately depict what he wants to capture. With patience and affection, the painter's clear gaze contemplates village paths and yachts at anchor, adjusting the distant values to emphasize perspective, and intensifying the nuances of the sky to maintain the overall unity of atmosphere through color.Michel Margrey's work can be said to be a testament to his artistic gentleness and the boundless richness of the world around us.


Michel-Margueray, Univers des arts 2007 06

The city of Condé-sur-Noireau opens its municipal museum. To commemorate the opening, a 50th-anniversary exhibition of Michel Margrey's artistic career will be held.Margrey was born in Landelles, Normandy in 1938. He began painting from an early age and became a painter. Since 1992, the city of Condé-sur-Noireau has held painting and sculpture exhibitions, and Margrey became one of the founders of that salon, exhibiting every year. Margrey is popular not only in France but also in the United States, where he holds regular exhibitions, and in recent years, he has also been introduced in Japan. Michel Margrey is indeed a talented painter with a strong artistic individuality and pictorial charisma. From his paintings, one can feel his attachment to the motifs and his passion for transforming them into his own poetic world of color. Margrey, before nature, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration. To quote the artist himself: "Each landscape, each element of nature, is constantly changing. The artist's impressions also change. Therefore, even when painting the same landscape, the approach changes each time. One must feel the atmosphere, capture the emotion, and even reconstruct the painting. In other words, it is necessary to go beyond the initial impression and beyond the visible world. Margrey became a singer of the seasons and the everyday landscapes around him, and also a reporter of quiet life. At any rate, the Michel Margrey 50th Anniversary Exhibition of his artistic career, commemorating the opening of the Charles Léandre Municipal Museum in Condé-sur-Noireau, will satisfy his long-time fans and teach us that true art makes people happy.

Univers des arts magazine, Summer 2002 issue

Michel Margrey

Michel Margrey is a member of the Society of French Artists and the National Society of Fine Arts, active both in and outside of France.Even trying to convey the image of this painter on a single page, it is impossible to tell the entire story of his artistic adventures that began in his childhood.

Magritte's critique of his work, "I feel something akin to poetry," perfectly expresses the essence of his painting. The landscapes he paints are more mundane than breathing to him, landscapes he has been familiar with since childhood, which he can paint "even with his eyes closed," so to speak.

He wanders through various places, along coasts, paths, and harbors, finding places that evoke emotion with tenderness and modesty. "High Tide," "Cabin," and "Returning from Fishing" are peaceful everyday scenes that he fixes onto the canvas as if cherishing happy moments passing by.

Patrice de La Perrière