Germain Bonelfrench Expressionist Landscape, The Abri At L'olivette, Cap D'antibes1960

A French Expressionist oil on canvas landscape of countryside at L'Olivette, Cap d'Antibes on the French Riviera, by Germain Bonel. The painting is signed bottom right and signed, dated and titled to the back of the canvas.

A strong and impactful composition of the trees and forest leading down to the sea wall and then the Mediterranean beyond at the Port (or 'Abri' as it is also known) of l'Olivette on the west coast of Cap d'Antibes, the iconic location in the South of France. This former small traditional fishing port from the beginning of the twentieth century is now converted into a picturesque little marina on Cap d'Antibes, with its rocky cove, its beach, its pine forest, its umbrella pines, olive trees, fig trees, and agaves and its famous 'Villa Aujourd'hui' a modernist residence built by American architect Barry Dierks (1899-1960) in 1938 for socialite Mrs. Audrey Chadwick. L'Olivette has a privileged panoramic view of the Gulf of Juan, and the coastal shores of Cap d'Antibes, Juan-les-Pins, Golfe-Juan, and the Pointe Croisette of Cannes.

Germain Bonel (5 August 1913 – 2002) was a French painter of Catalan origin. From 1967 to 1983, he was a professor of drawing and painting at the Perpignan School of Fine Arts. From 1969 to 1978, he also taught art in the schools of Saint-Cyprien-village and Saint-Cyprien-Plage.

Germain Bonel's painting is both expressionist and decorative. Georges-Henry Gourrier said of him: "Germain Bonel's painting expresses [quite naturally] the singular beauty of forms, the radiant force of colour, the deepening of matter and the tenderness of the things of life. His work appears to be a painting of plenitude."

From 1941 to 1945, Germain Bonel studied drawing at the Municipal School of Fine Arts in Perpignan. He won first prize in 1945. Out of competition, he continued his studies at the same school from 1945 to 1948 and he regularly exhibited his works at the annual exhibition held at the Salle Arago in Perpignan.

Germain Bonel met François Desnoyer in 1950 and introduced him to the Catalan artistic milieu.

He was admitted to the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1951 and exhibited until 1961, when he became a member of the salon. As early as 1951 a commentary said, "with the canvas hanging in the living room alongside Marcel Gromaire, Bonel offered a superb range of bistres, browns and blacks that set the tone for what was to become the character and key lines of his painting. This painting subtly conveyed the harmonies of strength and tenderness that distinguished [his] painting.".

He was selected for the Menton Biennial in 1953.

He won the Prix de la Jeune Peinture and was admitted to the Salon while exhibiting at the Drouand David gallery in Paris.

From Germain Bonel's first exhibition in Paris in 1962, George Besson did not fail to warmly salute the temperament of this Catalan artist, emphasizing in particular: "the strength, the feeling, the majestic simplicity of his robust poetic prose, a delightful chromatic and formal transposition of reality. In the same year, François Desnoyer wrote: "The artist gives, by his continuous work, the guarantee of a true painter. His nature is generous, coupled with a constant enthusiasm for the spectacle of life. Drawing, value, colour: everything is used to the maximum in his painting. All of them are incised, engraved, and constructed in plans and values; is articulated like a 'Sardana rhythm'".

"It is difficult to remain insensitive to such a painting that is perfectly harmonious, serious without being austere, colourful without unnecessary accents, a painting in which order, health, a certain rustic elegance and spirit reign," said the art critic George Besson in 1965.

In 1988, on the occasion of the tribute paid by the city of Perpignan for his forty years of painting, Bernard Nicolau declared: "Germain Bonel excludes in his creations any artifice, any concession, neglecting the detail for the benefit of the whole. He transgresses the established rules, works all his colours to become unique, to arrive at what he knows to be his truth. He intensely pursues the search for the coloured note in particular its ochres, its reds. The artist plays with refined forms: he expands, truncates, stretches his characters, his forms so that the first glance can only see what he wants, that is to say the essential: feeling. His painting is sometimes harsh but never brutal. He doesn't want to diminish certain effects, they are there because they are part of the work. All harmonies are safe, never hazardous. They are the result of a calculation, a reflection, a very sure precision towards the feeling that animates the artist.".

It was said of Bonel's painting: "This expressive force that characterizes the work comes from a raw, often geometric graphics. Bodies are treated as architectures whose presence carries emotion or feeling. The group scenes denote an affection for the human race, the landscapes express the telluric powers, her motherhood is steeped in the sweetness of the emotional bond. Germain Bonel loved simple and beautiful things, his painting is the theatre where he superbly staged them."

Condition report:

Good. Extensive craquelure commensurate with age and material.