| We learned with great pain, the death of the painter Pierre Girieud, which occurred in Nogent-sur-Marne, after a long and painful illness. Provence loses in him one of its most representative children, one of its most authentic interpreters.
Most of his work has been devoted.
In the admirable series of landscapes which he painted and of which the museum of Marseilles has an important testimony, the sites of our Provence where he loved to live and relive and return, hold a major place. The Aix countryside, Lourmarin, Cadenet, Lauris, Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, Riez - cradle of his family - Forcalquier, Roussillon, Arles, Saint-Cyr, the slopes of Ventoux, the Var valley, only towns and villages l 'have seen in turn, wearing sneakers, in blue coveralls, in the morning light or the falling evening of long summer days, happy and rich like the gods of the earth his familiar.
He liked to surround himself with their company; it populated its harmonious compositions, in the shade of cypresses and olive trees, at the edge of the fountains in the rough folds of geological movements among lavender and thyme, in a kind of musical eternity which escapes from a flute of reeds or of the lyre of Orpheus, within the assemblies of sages.
To better capture the spirit, he wanted to make long stays in Italy, Greece, Egypt, Spain, because the only infidelities of his genius to Provence were made in homage to the mothers and sisters of his native country . The world only organized itself, for the eye of this Latin, on the edge of the Mediterranean.
He leaves a considerable work: easel paintings, some of which are exhibited in museums in France and Europe, albums of lithographs, illustrations, large frescoes on the walls of public or private monuments: University of Poitiers, town hall of Ivry, Pradines castle, Jas de Puyvert.
He spent his life at work.
It is a great painter who disappears and the man the size of the painter.
May his wife, whose courage and devotion were admirable during these long days of suffering, may his daughter and his son allow us to bow before their pain. |