Paul Collomb, French (1921 - )

1950 Fénéon prize.
1950 First second Great Prize of Rome
1951 Prize of the Casa Velasquez (one year in Spain).
1953­54 Pensioner of the French Institute of Amsterdam.
1958 Prize of the Salon Comparaisons (Art Modern Art Museum, Paris).
1968 Prize Francis Smith (Stay in Portugal).
1996 The Taylor Foundation awarded him the Cormon Great Prize for his whole works.
1996 Received, at the Kwang­Ju Museum (South Korea), the respectable O­JI­HO prize, awarded for the first time to an european artist.

Last display :

1997 Galerie Robin ­ Léadouze, Paris.

From 1955 until 1996 :

Numerous displays and exhibitions in Paris : Galerie Sagot Le Garrec, Galerie Lorenceau, Galerie Vendôme and continuously since 1972 at the Galerie Guiot.

In France : Au Temps Retrouvé (Grenoble), Mignon­Massart (Nantes), Triade (Barbizon), La Pléiade (Grenoble), Lyon, Nice, etc...

Abroad : International Gallery (Chicago), Galerie Suarez (Miami), Marcos Castillo (Caracas), Galerie d'Hermance (Switzerland), Central Museum (Utrecht), Institut Franco Japonais Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, etc.

Special guest of numerous displays in France and abroad : Figurative Group of International Art : Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Montreal, Seoul, Germany, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Manchester. Three French Masters : The U.S.A., etc.

Retrospect :

1967 Museum of Annecy.
1981 Museum of the region of Ain.
1985 Saint­Jean de Monts.
1986 "Hommage à P. Collomb" Oyonnax ­ 1992 "50 ans de peinture" Angers.
1989 Thesis by B. Giraud, "P. Collomb, un maître contemporain de la peinture figurative"
1992 "50 ans de peinture" Angers.

Works in Museums :

Modern Art Museum of the town of Paris Modern Art Museum of Utrecht Modern Art Museum of Djakarta Modern Art Museum of Tel­Aviv Modern Art Museum of New­York Modern Art Museum of Gdansk Modern Art Museum of Besançon Modern Art Museum of Bagnols sur Cèze Modern Art Museum of Saint Denis Modern Art Museum of Bourg en Bresse Modern Art Museum of Annecy Modern Art Museum of Belfort Modern Art Museum of Toulon. Modern Art Museum of Kwang­Ju (South Korea).

To learn more about, see, the book collection "Maîtres Figuratifs Contemporains" Paul Collomb, S.N.P.M.D publisher ­ Paris, 1986.

Translated abstracts of some newspaper articles:

...For twenty years, Paul Collomb, modest in his qualms, applies oneself with obstinacy and with the most high-minded concerns, to solve some problems of art, which were to paint without gratuitous digressions, that were the alibi of the weak. From which a uncommon language through its kind and through its ambition which preclude the pastiche of the mannerism of this epoch and the advanced factitious scents, as well as the ignorance of the enrichments dispensed by the inborn sense of few people, responsible for beneficial aesthetic revolutions. Within the pictorial obscurantism and the contemporary irrationality, Paul Collomb is one of the young artist who are going to maintain and, if possible, endeavour to re-establish, the painting rights and the assets of ground.

Paul Collomb reveals that, in the organization of its simple, quick-tempered and accurate feelings, revealing the tenderness for the truth and an indefectible cordiality for the real...
According to George Besson, 1964

... Portrait-painter, and as this style to be set within the brilliant way of the ever great french painting , Paul Collomb is a pattern-painter too. Gazing at nature, as a river side, as a pond corner, are much more "portraits" than landscapes or lighting effects of a quite simple pantheism, full of sweetness, with sometimes some pathos, and always a tactful modesty. Probably the main key of his universe is an intimate one and, if one could think about the too easy comparison painting with music, it would be the "Domestic Symphony" that will come up...
According to Roger Bouillot, 1981

...As this former pensioner of the Casa Velasquez in Madrid, of the French Institute of Amsterdam, ran within thirty years in an ever imperil way, one can be thought that he did not lock himself in his ivory tower, and that, at contrary, he paid a strong attention to the great work of his famous elders, Velasquez, Tintoret or, more recently, Pierre Bonnard, for example.
He did not kept far away from the both colourist and graphic researches of his contemporaries, even though it were mainly by a continuous analytic process the Paul Collomb's art had progressed. He reached an absolute integration of the colour in the drawing and created again the light...
That explains why Paul Collomb approaches now topics that he neglected before : ship wrecks, harlequins; but if the matter is as rich as ever, the colours and the harmony of canvases so accurate, they exhibit, nevertheless, a seriousness, a melancholy that, at first, did not appear in his works. His smash-open hulls, hieratic effigies of a forgotten past, fascinate and impress as a whole; his models are children, but children who ceased to smile as if, through them, the painter questioning came up...
According to Bertrand Duplessis, 1981.

For Collomb, Art is far beyond all these things, when there is a kind of conjunction between the inward feeling and its resumption. There and back to the reality (character ­ landscape ­ object...) a sign, then this sign of life. Ceaseless go and back which Paul Collomb asserts to find again always in the great works he admires, as "La fiancée juive" by Rembrandt, where the excitement and confusion raise the fact that he does not know if he looks a man, laying lovingly the hand on a young woman breast, or the delight of some ivory tint laying carefully on an old-fashioned red. Ivory tint which becomes again the hand and the old-fashioned red, the dress, there is here the mystery and the thrill begin.
According to Benoit GIRAUD, University of Lyon II ­ Institute of Art History 1988 ­ 1989 (Abstract of "Paul Collomb, un maître contemporain de la peinture figurative")

" ... Furthermore there is something religious in the Paul Collomb Art : pantheism days after days, his painting is as fellow works, the sharing of the bred.
Humanist fervour, touchy sense of nostalgia, of quiet happiness, persuasive intimate one, which can call forth Bonnard, light touch of irony, all akin the Collomb's painting to the genuine line of the french painting. And up to this harmony, a little mysterious, where high-pitched tunes of the plucked strings, stresses of violoncello and engaging voice of contralto, conjugate themselves, in plastic equivalents. Three lines of force organized the Paul Collomb's thoughts, Water, the ? ; ? , the human nature, which make this artist one poet of the three nature kingdom. And from his art approach, a kind of inconsistency ending at the most exacting part and the highest of the painting easel, the human figure. From the sketch prompted by an instant excitement, to the great most ambitious composing Paul Collomb's art is all in diffused delectation.
According to Roger Bouillot, "L'0eil" 1992.

Of course, there is a talent established thanks to the power of the colour and to the good knowledge of the paint-brush, and the mastering of rhythms, and the balance of the composition ­ but its much more ! It seems to me that your exegetic people, in their dissertation about the philosophy of the painting, do not praise the secret fibre, the intimate paint-brush lighted by humanism which, involve in things of life, try to decipher the human being enigma, the secret of the earth ; the passionate painter willing to establish dialogue between beauty and truth and who, as we are seeing the only trees and boughs, reveals the grove of love.
A careful analysis of your works confirms your point : "... starting from an abstraction needed but not sufficient a second degree world, parallel to the life, created again itself; This double way of the real pattern and its plastic or pictorial sign, then the sign to a re-creating is for me indispensable".
Point that joins mine own one : "All sincere art works bears a double evidence... The creation is a choice in the memory reserves, a particular manner to see, to coordinate, to create again the nature, to reach the transcendence".
According to Pierre Osenat, Le Caducée ­ june ­ July 1996.