Henri Richelet

Henri Richelet (16 June 1944 – 18 March 2020) was a French painter.

Early life and education Born to primary school teachers in a small village close to Domrémy, the birthplace of Joan of Arc, Richelet spent his childhood and adolescence in the neighbouring small town of Neufchâteau (Vosges). After his baccalauréat, he first attended the École des Beaux-Art in Nancy, then the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Beaux-Arts de Paris) in Paris.

Career In 1968, Richelet was awarded the First Grand Prix of the Casa de Velázquez, a French school in Madrid, in the etching category.*

Besides his participation in group exhibitions since 1963, Richelet made numerous solo exhibitions between 1965 and 2007 in France, Quebec and Chile. He also regularly took part in several salons, including: Salon d'Automne, Salon de Mai, Salon Comparaisons, Salon Grands et jeunes d’aujourd’hui, Salon de Boulogne-Billancourt, Salon d'art contemporain de Montrouge, Salon Figuration critique.

Oeuvre Richelet's provocative humour made him choose gloomy colours. Following the tradition of Caravaggio, or of Georges de La Tour in his Saint Jérôme pénitent, he used dark backgrounds to make livid and pallid flesh of tense, hunched up bodies stand out. ″Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas,″ he was fond of reminding us. This apophthegm haunts many works of Richelet, where his obsession with sex and death is expressed by a parallel between impotence and incapacity to create. One can be surprised, in some of his canvases, by the warm vermilion of a drape, a borrowing which would not have been renounced by the two old masters he so admired. Energetic lines in Richelet's paintings, drawings, and etchings oddly bring corpses, broken and mutilated in their physical beauty, on the verge of death.

Works in museum collections Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid: Coucou !: etching, resin () Duo en trois mouvements: etching, resin () Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile: Ne pas toucher: Indian ink on paper () Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago, Chile: Derniers outrages: oil painting on canvas ()

Exhibitions Solo exhibitions

1965: Casino de Contrexéville, Contrexéville, France 1968: Maison des Beaux-Arts, Paris 1971: Galerie Beaudelaire, Quebec Galerie Chantauteuil, Quebec 1974: Galerie L’Art du Monde, Paris 1976: Galerie L'Estuaire, Honfleur, France 1990: Galerie Ceibo, Paris 1996: Town Hall, Neufchâteau, France 1998: Galerie Thermale, Contrexéville, France 1999: Galería Modigliani, Viña del Mar, Chile 2001: Musée Roybet–Fould, Courbevoie, France Galerie Aux créations du possible, Paris Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts), Santiago, Chile 2006: Galería Modigliani, Viña del Mar, Chile 2007: Le Trait d’Union, Neufchâteau, France

Main group exhibitions

1969 & 1970: Casa de Velázquez, Madrid Salle Comtesse de Caen, Institut de France, Paris. 1977–1978: La Boîte, ARC 2, Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris 1981: Cent gravures contemporaines, Aulnay-sous-Bois, France 1982 & 1987: Casa de Velázquez, Madrid Salle Comtesse de Caen, Institut de France, Paris 1991: Art contemporain international, Château de la Bonnetière, Haut-Poitou, France 1996: 3e Festival de l’art actuel, Château d’O, Orne, France 1997: Dialogue Est-Ouest art festival, Vayolles, France 2000: Variations, Espace Belleville, Paris 2003: Hommage à S. Allende, Ris-Orangis, France 2004: George Sand, interprétations, Couvent des Cordeliers, Châteauroux, France

Personal life He had been living in Paris since the 1970s, after having spent a few years in Quebec. He was married to the Chilean painter Ximena Armas.

Death During the COVID-19 pandemic, Richelet died from COVID-19 on 18 March 2020 in Paris, aged 75.

Henri Richelet

Bron en licentie