Pierre de Berroeta (1914-2004) - Paisaje campestre

\Artist: Pierre de Berroeta (1914-2004)
Technique: Oil on canvas\Signature: Hand signed
Pierre Ambroise de BERROETA was born in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, on April 1, 1914, to Jacques Alfred de Berroeta and his wife Marthe Tinel. Alfred was an industrialist and negotiated with Argentina in the field of goldsmithing. But above all, he was very fond of art and collected works of which are famous today. Did that influence young Pierre? The truth is that Pierre, from his earliest childhood, showed an enormous interest in drawing and colours. While studying at the Pasteur de Neuilly/Seine institute, he attended drawing classes with Madame de Sampigny and painting and wood engraving with the painter Clément Cerveau. He spent his holidays in the Basque Country, in the villa that the family owned in Beyris, now converted into a Bayonne district. The child, of delicate constitution, would become a robust adult who was able to withstand deprivation during the period of captivity that he spent in the stalag IIc. He joined the National High School of Fine Arts in May 1933. He worked under the direction of André Dewambez, after Charles Guérin. Named “Macero”, and later “Macero Mayor”, there, he met another student, Marguerite Barboteu, who was called "Guichoune", whom he would later marry. Candidate for the Rome Prize, he was betrayed by his professor Charles Guérin who did not support him and was not even part of the jury, thus marking his opposition to the institution. Recently integrated into the Fine Arts, the School exhibited its works that were highlighted by critics. Drawn up on April 15, 1935, Pierre de Berroeta did military service in Alsace, in Oberhoffen (Bas Rhin) in the 20th squadron of the train. An artist despite everything, he decorated the regiment's dining room with a fresco painting and drew the insignia. Discharged in September 1936, he resumed his studies in Fine Arts. Mobilised in Nancy on August 24, 1939, assigned to regulate roads and then to Battalion 172 of the Corps of Engineers, he was taken prisoner almost immediately and sent to Stalag IIc of Greifswald in Poméranie, in the Baltic. Seeing his drawings on various sheets, the commander of the stalag realized his gifts and ordered that he be given paper, pencils, India ink and paintings so that he could draw . . . Parisian monuments and scenes of daily life in the stalag. Pierre de Berroeta obtained the right to keep one drawing for every 20 that he gave to the Germans; the Army Museum preserves some of them bearing the "stalag IIc" stamp. Thanks to the doctor of the camp and two friends whose friendship he would preserve for a lifetime, he devised a ploy to return to France. He had lost 40 kilos. Back in June 1941, he married Marguerite Suzanne Charlotte Barboteu in September of the same year at the Neuilly/Seine town hall and at the Saint-Ferdinand des Ternes church. Prolific artist, tireless worker, he participated in 3 exhibitions that same year-end. After that he did not stop exhibiting: Autumn Salon, Page gallery in Bayonne, Artistic Group in Saint-Nazaire, Daricarrère gallery in Biarritz; his painting is figurative, he likes the circus, in the Bouglione brothers' Winter Circus he exhibited notable works, for the "Friends of the Circus" circle. On June 5, 1943, Marie-laure, the only daughter of Pierre and Guichoune, was born. Guichoune's parents lived in Argentina and the couple decided to go to this South American country, preceded by a not inconsiderable fame, it seems, since the press announced the arrival of the two artists while they were still in the Atlantic. The landscapes, the colours, the faces of the Indians, the indigenous animals enriched Pierre de Berroeta's palette. He exhibited in the most famous galleries, painted portraits of Argentine high society and also of the gauchos and the Indians. The trips he made to France allowed him to make his fellow citizens discover this distant country that lived in the European style. He became one of the most famous Argentine painters, if not the most famous. He was never carried away by ease, he didn't care about honours. That's how he realised his future was another. He decided to return to France, despite not enjoying the same notoriety there. He continued his research, first becoming a cardboard worker and then tackling abstraction. They were works more than once retouched. In them, the bases learned in Fine Arts and personal investigations in fields as diverse as those of shapes, materials, composition, colours and supports are noted. More than 150 tapestries were woven in Aubusson, in the Gobelins or in Beauvais to satisfy the requests so much of the State as of the individuals; But Pierre de Berroeta did not forget to offer this art to the great majority, by giving cardboards for mechanical upholstery whose lower cost makes them available to all. The figurative disappeared little by little to make room for abstraction, with doubts, essays dealing with all subjects: portraits, still lifes, street scenes, animals, architecture. . . In 1958, when he returned from a trip to Peñíscola, he took the final step (except for the day when, many years later, he responded to the challenge of his grandchildren by taking pictures of them in less than 5 minutes!) . The first abstract canvases have few colours and seem to attest to how intense Pierre's inner battle was during this evolution. Then the colours returned accompanied by thicknesses which characterised the canvases of the 1960s. The seventies are those of the pictorial plenitude that allowed him to approach other forms of his art: structures of various materials, glass slabs, tiles, enamelled Volvic lava and, of course, tapestries. In the following two decades, he returned to gouache and painting. The happiness of the painter who spent more time in the Basque Country, in the midst of the nature that he loved so much, than in Paris, gave rise to works of great maturity, with a major change in 1994 due to serious health problems that occurred in 1993. At the end of 2001, his visual capacity was greatly altered and he was forced to rest, a situation that he experienced with great dignity. Pierre de Berroeta died on 6 February 2004 in Isturitz. Unusual style painting in this painter, very beautiful and of great quality. It has some holes (see photos) . Please look at all the pictures, they are part of the description. Dimensions: 72 cm wide, 60 cm high.