Printer: Mourlot

Dimensions: 64 x 48 cm

Condition: Very good 

Frame: Oak

Description: The Salon des Jeunes Peintres was founded after the Second World War to give young artists the opportunity to exhibit their work at a time when French painting was rebuilding itself. By its tenth anniversary in 1959, it had become one of the country’s most important showcases for emerging talent.

Paul Rebeyrolle was among the new generation of painters making their mark. After studying briefly with Fernand Léger, he soon developed a style that was entirely his own, using bold colour and powerful organic forms to express the physical energy that would become a hallmark of his work.

This original poster, published for the Salon’s tenth anniversary at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, captures Rebeyrolle at an important stage in his career. Looking at it today, you can already see the confidence and individuality that would later establish him as one of France’s most distinctive post-war painters.

Artist: Paul Rebeyrolle (1926 - 2005) was a French painter. He was born near Limoges and learned to paint in childhood during long periods of immobility from tuberculosis. Surrounded by the French countryside and its traditions, he had a passion for hunting, fishing and slaughterhouses, subjects which would later feature in his earthy-toned landscapes featuring caricature-like people. He moved to Paris in 1944 to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Six years later, he won the Prix de la Jeune Peinture (Young Painter Prize) and earned a reputation as a leader in the realist tendency – opposition to abstraction in post-war France. His paintings were often tempered with violence. Outside of the studio, he joined the French Communist Party but left before the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. In the same year, his art developed into a looser style, which by the 1960s had morphed into swathes of swirling and splashing paint.