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Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Georges Rouault


Georges Rouault (1871-1958)
Head of Christ, c. 1939
Oil on paper pasted on canvas
65 x 50 cm
Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia





Georges Rouault (1871-1958)
Christ, 1937-38





A "Modernist" (in the Art sense), Georges Rouault was preoccupied throughout his life with man's inhumanity to his fellow man.

He portrayed absolutes: the outcast and the saint, the sufferer and the redeemer.

The suffering of Christ was his frequent subject. His thickly encrusted, powerfully colored images, outlined heavily in black, have the effect of icons and a pattern suggestive of stained glass.

Rouault was unabashedly a religious man. "I hope to paint a Christ so moving that those who see Him will be converted," he said.

Rouault, had to wait until 1949 when he reached the age of eighty before seeing one of his works admitted to a church - a little church at Assy in France.

In September 1950, Pope Pius XII welcomed 300 artists and art authorities from 23 countries to a Rome conference on religious art. The Vatican had arranged a vast show of 1,400 religious art works produced in the past half century. Included were works by Georges Rouault.

References:

The works of Georges Rouault (French site)

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