| Among the generation of artists to which Pierre Girieud belongs, I see very few whose work gives as much as his own the impression of unity and continuity. One feels to study it that the one who is its architect is armed with unshakable convictions from which laughs, no more success than failure, could not divert it. (....) Apart from some Norman prints dated 1904 and some landscapes of Rome and Venice, Siena and San Giminiano executed in 1906 and 1907, all of Pierre Girieud's work is dedicated to celebrating the beauties of his Provence. (....) And perhaps still, it is during his stays in Italy that Girieud must have felt by contrast or by analogy, the charm of this native country, where he had lived until then, that he loved as unconsciously, and of which he was soon to be called, exclusively the painter. Exclusively. Because only Provencal nature constantly attracts and exalts him and it is with a freshness of sensitivity, a spontaneity of execution always new that every year, for months, he returns to plant his easel in front of the face of this earth loved by the gods, in order to add to the hymn of admiration and love that he dedicated to her one more verse, richer in meaning and more perfect, more expressive and more beautiful. (....)
But aren't this attachment to the legendary and mythological themes which had their cradle in the Mediterranean basin and then radiated, through classical culture, throughout the whole universe, this obsession with Greco-Latin antiquity, aren't they all natural at Girieud? Girieud is from Provence; from his birth, he breathed the clear azure of this blessed region which "the light gave birth to while smiling", says Mistral, and which the ghosts of the Gods still inhabit! (....)
What is astonishing, then, that there are so many fabulous evocations of antiquity in his work? the Three Graces, Sappho (1912), Toilette de Vénus, Léda (1913), Inspiring Apollo, Ariane (1914) and the Afternoon Provençale and Ancient Land (1920) and the Clock of Naked Beauty and the Source of la Tinée (1921), whose figures with slow gestures, of a powerfully meditative dynamism, of a strong and healthy grace, of a true nobility, harmonize so intimate, neat, so naturally with the ample forms of the landscape Provencal, with the purity of the Provencal sky, are like the radiant and perennial flowers of this Provencal land.
What do I have the place to speak as I would like, of the two lithographic collections, Princesses of the Bible and the Fable (1919), the Love (1924), published by the Librairie de France in which asserts itself with Girieud's persistence in believing that the true classic has nothing to do with academicism - one is life, the other death - and to deal with subjects such as superficial minds or bias generally consider them as clichés, and which, moreover, have become clichés only by the lack of conviction and of life with which they have been so often, too often treated. This technique of lithography in which he excels, Girieud also used it to illustrate one of Paul Arène's masterpiece, Domnine, published by the art editor Scheur. (.... )
What pity that after having given in 1912, in the Pradines domain, on the walls of this Saint-Pancrace chapel where, alongside his friends, our friends, Alfred Lombard and Georges Dufrénoy he painted an admirable fresco decoration of the Magi, - the glaring proof of his possibilities as a painter of large wall surfaces, Girieud has not yet found the opportunity to manifest himself with all the suitable scale!
Those who were aware of the sketches of the frescoes he composed in 1924 to decorate the walls of the deplorable famous "Cour des Métiers" of the Decorative Arts Exhibition of 1925; those who know with what generosity of inspiration what richness of composition and color he had implemented the two themes which had been reserved for him: the Arts of Stone and the Arts of Life, cannot console themselves for failure (due to the narrowness of mind and the incomprehension, what do I say? in contempt of all greatness which characterizes the public authorities) of this beautiful project. And don't compositions like the Transhumants, like the Homage to Paul Arene seem made, with their mixture of familiarity and lyricism, to be translated by the tapestries of the Gobelins or executed in fresco and decorate the walls of some building public?
And Girieud is a powerful portrait painter, expert in fixing manly, with rare acuity, intellectual and psychological resemblances, in carving out a face, in bringing interior life to life. His effigies of Georges Duhamel, the musician Stanislas de Rohonzinski, the novelist Albert Erlande, the poet Fernand Mazade, the luminous translator of Plato, Mario Meunier, the portraits that each year, upon returning from his summer campaigns in Provence, he paints after itself, are iconographic pages worthy of the future.
What are the aspects of his beloved Provence which Girieud has preferably, at random from his summer races, fixed so far? In 1919 he worked in Vence and Saint-Paul du Var; in 1920 in the Clans valley; in 1923 in Lourmarin; in 1924, in Marseilles, Toulon, Solliès-Pont, Trets, Tourves, Moustiers Sainte-Marie, Cucuron, Saint-Tropez; in 1925, in Barjols, Moustiers, Gordes, Buis-les baronnies; in 1926 in Carpentras, Malaucène, Sisteron, Gréoux; in 1927, in Marseilles, Aix, Simiane, Forcalqier, Lourmarin; in 1928, in Saint-Rémy, in Orgon, in Eyguière, in Maussane, in Moustiers, in Riez, in Lourmarin, in Arles.
Each of the pages painted by Girieud in front of these decorations of nature has precision, the life of a real portrait. No essential details are missing; everything is organized, everything is ordered in the light in accordance with reality. No unnecessary thoroughness, however; Girieud's vision is always broad and strong, his means of expression always powerful and firm. (....)
The last exhibition that Girieud held very recently from January 7 to 18, 1929, in the rooms of the Druet gallery, showed the full development of his generous talent. (....)
Certain landscapes of Moustiers, - Lou Pastre, and the painter in front of his subject in particular - and of Riez - which is the native country of Girieud - Columns in front of the Sacred Hill, certain views, as we used to say, of the Antiques of Saint- Rémy and de Lourmarin that among others where Girieud spoke at the foot of the castle restored by the generous initiative of the late Laurent Vibert, the graces of an ancient scene and that of the Asse valley, and that of the Ancient Theater of Arles, one of the most moving, and which the State did well to acquire for the Luxembourg museum, such flowers too, without forgetting the interpretations both faithful and free that Girieud attempted after Rubens, according to Tintoretto, according to Cranach, we brought here the testimony of this evolution today accomplished of the talent of Girieud and his final mastery. (....) |