Francis GRUBER 1912-1948
Francis Gruber, ardent defender of figuration
The son of Jacques Gruber, the famous master glassmaker of the Nancy School, Francis Gruber was soon considered a child prodigy, demonstrating an exceptional talent for drawing and painting.
However, his fragile health and asthma kept him out of school. Under these conditions, he found refuge in dreams and fantasy, in literature as much as in painting. He continued his training at the Scandinavian Academy Paris and rubbed shoulders with Tal Coat, Walch, and André Marchand. In the Montparnasse district of the 1940s, Francis Gruber frequented Giacometti and Antonin Artaud. In 1941, he married the daughter of playwright Henry Bernstein.
Winner of the National Prize for « Nu assis » (Seated Nude) in 1947, the painter Francis Gruber died of tuberculosis the following year at the age of 36.
Indifferent to the exploration of abstract art in the 1930s, Francis Gruber was a fervent defender of figuration, whose artistic expression could only be exacerbated by the tragic reality of the Second World War.
At no point did he attempt to "escape the march of history" because, according to him:
"The painter, sensitive above all to man, to human life, cannot but be deeply affected by the event."
The artist expressed this return to figuration by favoring the human figure, which he treated with particularly finely crafted and intense drawing.
While marking his retreat from the question of aesthetics, the power of Francis Gruber's work is rooted in the graphic tradition of Jacques Callot and 15th-century German engravers such as Bosch, Grünewald, and Dürer. He became the emblematic figure of the young generation of painters of the 1950s.
Francis Gruber's Latest Exhibitions
- 1976 Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris
- 2009 Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy
- 2009 Musée d’Art Roger Quilliot de Clermont-Ferrand.
- 2017 Galerie de la Présidence : " Giacometti-Gruber, un regard partagé "
