Abstract Expressionist, Large Oil On Canvas, Le Pèlerin From 1990 By Bernard Duvert

Expressionist abstract oil on canvas by French artist Bernard Duvert. The painting is signed bottom left, dated and titled to the rear stretchers and with exhibition numbers.

A magnificent strong painting full of vivacity, energy and life. Duvert has used his material to create a virtual sculpture on the canvas with thick use of paint to create a texture and form to the composition. Full of striations of colour and form, the face of the subject, a pilgrim, is just decipherable to the centre. A wonderful painting that would grace any collection and be a statement piece in any interior.

Bernard Duvert was a French writer, poet, playwright, painter and priest.

Bernard Duvert began his schooling at the school in Belleville (Paris), where he lived with his parents and older sister. At a very young age, he discovered his vocation to the priesthood, but also to the arts. He has Slavic ancestry through his maternal grandfather, who was born in St. Petersburg, and his Polish great-grandmother. His father, originally from Corrèze, was a stage manager and electrician at the Théâtre des Folies Bergère, the Théâtre de l'Œuvre and the Théâtre de l'Atelier. In the 1950s, Bernard Duvert frequented painting circles, thanks to a painter cousin Edmond Missa (École de Paris), son of the composer and organist Edmond Missa, with whom he took his first steps in painting.

In 1970, during his very first watercolour exhibition in Béduer in the Lot, he met Madame Jean Voilier, who noticed his talents. It was President Georges Pompidou, who lived nearby in Cajarc, who introduced them. Thus, the woman who was Paul Valéry's muse, became his godmother during her seminary years in Paray-le-Monial and Cortona (Italy) from 1971 to 1975. In 1975, the Episcopal Palace of Cortona in Italy organized an exhibition devoted to his work on paper from his figurative period.

He then tried to reconcile his passion for painting with his religious commitment, but he eventually understood the difficult harmony between an independent spirit and the rule. In 1979, following his ordination to the priesthood, he became aware of his freedom of being, defining himself as a "free Catholic". As a priest and painter, he made himself available to the world of artists, notably in 1979 at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse with Michel Plasson.

The 1980s saw the emergence of a figurative pictorial style characterized by critical visions of religious scenes, slowly beginning to belong to the Expressionist movement.

In 1988, he had a decisive encounter with the Swedish expressionist painter Bengt Lindström, inaugurating a form of critical-religious expression with oil painting. Several exhibitions followed, marking lines of research between Lindströmian expressionism and a painting that would become less and less figurative. He retained the spirit of Linsdtröm's work by painting large thick layers and rapid gestures.

In 1992, the City of Paris acquired one of his paintings, characteristic of a short period of Symbolist abstraction.

In the 90s, breakthroughs and research gave rise to an increasingly characteristic iconoclastic style, notably through the choice of wooden supports, reviving the medieval art of the Altarpiece. In 1994, following a commission, he created a large altarpiece on the theme of baptism for the church of Tour-de-Faure (Lot).

His brief stay in Marseille in 1996 inaugurated his new form of pictorial writing inspired by the observation of cypress rows in Provence.

In 1997, after his return to Paris, Jean de Bengy, Inspector of Artistic Creation at the Ministry of Culture, wrote about Bernard Duvert: "His writing seems to have reached an undeniable mastery in his research..., at a strong point. A work that is undeniably his own and whose whole, like every detail, is part of what modernity can bring to the table.»

In 2000, he founded the Max Jacob Fraternity [archive] - School of Art and Spirituality, which took up Max Jacob's vow and this notion of the Sacred to lead it to a successful critical form. Bernadette Lafont, whom she met in 1991 thanks to Bengt Lindström, became the patron of the Fraternity and took part in the tributes paid on the occasion of the poet's death every 5 March in front of 7 rue Ravignan (Paris 18th).

From 2006, he divided his life between Paris and the south-west of France where he set up his new workshop. His pictorial style is more and more refined, assured and could in a way be related to the art of stained glass, so luminous does it become.

He created Church Art, which is an artistic movement in the visual arts as well as in music, literature and poetry, contrary to everything that determines religious art when it submits to regulatory canons. Close to critical, gnostic, cabalistic, apocryphal and subversive movements, it manifests a spirit of the Sacred without being religious. He could also be classified as a cartoonist every time he distances himself from the Institutions.

In 2015, Mrs. Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, awarded him the Grand Vermeil Medal of the City of Paris for his entire body of work.

He became friends with a number of artists, including Bernadette Lafont, Michel Fau, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Andréa Ferréol to name but a few.

Principales expositions
1975 : Palais Episcopal, Cortone (Italie)
1990 : Galerie Castiglione – Paule Lardé40, Paris
1991 : La Chantrerie, Cahors
1993 : Galerie Gastaud & Caillard, Paris
1994 : Centre Culturel de l’Aérospatiale, Toulouse
1996 : Galerie Horizon, Marseille
1998 : Chapelle de l’Hôpital Laënnec, Paris
2001 : « La lumière des Retables », Crypte du Martyrium de Saint Denis, Paris
2003 : « Les Nouvelles Icônes »8, Galerie Benchaïeb, Paris
2004 : « Cathédrale de Lumière – Icônes », Musée du Cloître, Tulle
2008 : « Initiation à la lumière »41, Espace Bouquières, Toulouse
2009 : Galerie Adrienne Lebrun, Salon des Antiquaires – Quai Branly, Paris / Exposition de groupe
2011 : « Couleurs en fête »42,43,44 avec Kaj-Ficaja, Temple, Caussade, en hommage à Bengt Lindström.
2012 : « Mythes et Sacré »45,46,47,48,49 avec la sculptrice Nisa Chevènement, Musée Ingres, Montauban
2013 : « Regards de peintre »50, Hall d’Honneur du Conseil Général de Tarn-et-Garonne, Montauban.
2015 : « Confessions publiques »51, Galerie L'Archétype, Caussade
2015 : Galerie Serventi52, Toulouse
2021 : « L'incendie de Notre-Dame », Galerie Hélène Nougaro, Paris

Condition report:

Good