NATURES VIVANTES

EMILE SABOURAUD

30 Octobre 2020 – 31 Janvier 2021

The exhibition “Emile Sabouraud: Living Natures” was produced in partnership with Le, Musée des Pêcheries of Fécamp and therefore consisted of two exhibition venues:

THE GALLERY

LE musée des pêcheries

If one word could summarized the vocation he embraced with both its pains and joy, its hopes and dreams, it would be Gluttony.  A word whose meaning carries flavor, but beyond the fragrance it suggest, it awakens mirages Nature usually reserves to its lovers, always willing to surrender like a beauty’s promise with its truth and kindness. A true and genuine calling was needed to keep the vital spark both spontaneous and unconscious all through a nearly hundred-year-old life, an impulse that reactivates his enthusiastic discoveries of the world, creatures and art, which will accompany and nourish his first creations, his constant self-examination, questioning, concerns, doubts constantly rejected by his imperious need to paint. From torment to the most thoughtful mirth, from doubt to the most sensitive fervor, Sabouraud maintained with constancy his native qualities, scandalously conventional and audacious in his quest for “a possessive, violent and schematic painting, sometimes fresh and vivid colors, and sometimes a hatched monochrome mix, bold and shaded (…) render all the soul’s colors, from melancholy to cheerfulness, from tenderness to a wild lyricism.

Lydia Harambourg

« C’EST LA VIE QUI ME FAIT PEINDRE »

In his work – but we could more accurately say his manifesto – soberly entitled “La Figuration” published in 1979, Émile Sabouraud wonders: “… many paintings have gone to the other side of the world without, so to speak, having been seen, for which I find it hard to console myself. My story doubtless resembles that of many painters; we are debited in installments. Who will bring us together?

This restless and existential questioning will certainly remain unanswered for many artists, even if they have talent … Such will not be the case for Sabouraud because, as if to provide an answer to this anguish of oblivion, the Friends of Sabouraud have undertaken the immense project of publishing the artist’s catalog raisonné, which brings together all of his painted works.

On the occasion of the publication of this work, the Musée des Pêcheries de Fécamp, in collaboration with the Danielle Bourdette-Gorzkowski Gallery in Honfleur, wished to present a choice of ‘still lifes’ by the painter Sabouraud, works that seem to be poorly named, they are so lively and colorful in an exhibition entitled: “Émile Sabouraud, living natures”.

Marie-Hélène Desjardins
Conservateur en chef du Patrimoine
Musée des Pêcheries, Fécamp

Discover the exhibition

Failing to be able to discover the exhibition presented at the Fécamp Museum, virtually browse the rooms through this video!

The Gallery

Born with this century, Sabouraud, was ninety-six years during, the attentive and discreet actor of the life put in painting “Staying by chance and by miracle with the variation“, too busy to be satisfied, without never succeeding enough to escape the anguish of painting, going from canvas to canvas, seeking the absolute of a certain painting. 

It is all the dialogue between the painter and the poetic and carnal reality which is summarized there, in twenty-four free and wild still lifes, made of signs and colored plans, shapes, arabesques and matter, reflections of a moving reality. these canvases demonstrate, if it is necessary, that true painting cannot be conceived without passion, without love, without exigency.

Danielle Bourdette-Gorzkowski

In this year of linked birthdays, I am pleased to pay a special tribute to this marvelous painter, with such a commitment to live figuration, who Pierre Cabane wrote about “ This worrywart’s wisdom is to listen to what all things are saying, and his happiness is to create pictures out of it : I mean, love poems.”

Danielle Bourdette-Gorzkowski

and even more ...

Please find below the catalogue of the gallery’s exhibition as well as the catalogue of works presented at the Musée des Pêcheries de Fécamp :