UNTITLED (ABSTRACT)
signed and dated Manessier '53 lower right
oil on canvas
27 x 46cm; 10 1/2 x 18in
49.5 x 68.5cm; 19 1/2 x 27in (framed)

Property from a French Private Collector

Provenance
Joris van Riel, Paris
Thence by descent to the present owner in 2004, son of the above

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Christine Manessier, the artist's daughter

In the years following the Second World War Manessier emerged as one of the most prominent painters of abstraction lyrique in Paris and a leading advocate for the renewal of sacred art in France. The artist discovered his strong religious convictions on a three-day retreat with the writer Camille Bourniquel at the abbey of Notre Dame de la Trappe de Soligny (Orne) in 1943. There he felt the rigour of the Cistercian Trappist order and the link between its services and the rhythms of days, nights and the seasons. The monks' chants inspired perhaps his greatest early painting, Salve Regina (1945), a work constructed with vertical slabs of singing reds, oranges and blues.

Manessier adopts a not dissimilar primary colour scheme in the present work. Horizontal lines positioned like staves of music are punctuated by black notes against bright yellow and red within a tightly ordered composition, calling to mind the work of Paul Klee. His interest in the sacred tradition of painting was encouraged by Georges Rouault (1871-1958) in whose work Christian subject matter had long been a central motif. Rouault saw the potential for Manessier’s oils to be translated into glass. In 1948 Manessier received his first stained glass commission for the church of Saint-Agathe des Bréseux, near Besançon. It marked the beginning of an extended period of collaboration between the painter and master glassmakers, as well as between the artist and the realm of religious art.

Manessier had grown up in Abbeville, inspired by the light and seascapes of the Bay of the Somme. He studied in Amiens and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he at first pursued a career in architecture while copying the Renaissance masters at the Louvre. He also frequented the Montparnasse ateliers and the Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists. In 1935, at the Académie Ranson, Manessier's tutor Roger Bissière introduced him to fresco techniques and the French romanesque. The artist first worked on murals as part of the team of Robert and Sonia Delaunay for the Railway Pavilion at the Paris World Fair of 1937. During the War he exhibited in the clandestine exhibition 'Twenty Young Painters of the French Tradition', held in defiance of the Nazis at the Galerie Braun in May 1941. It took place under the auspices of Jeune France, a liberal branch of an organisation finally dissolved by the Vichy government in March 1942.

After the War Manessier was selected as one of seven artists to exhibit his works as part of the French Pavilion at the 25th Venice Biennale in 1950. Further accolades followed: in 1953 he was awarded First Prize for painting at the São Paolo Biennale; in 1955 he received the Grand Prize for painting by the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and in 1962 he was the recipient of the Grand Prize for painting at the Venice Biennale.