Marcel AVRIL (1887–1944) - Lot 286

Lot n° 286
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50 - 80 EUR
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Marcel AVRIL (1887–1944) - Lot 286
Marcel AVRIL (1887–1944) The Man with Flowers Watercolor and ink (pen) on paper mounted on cardboard, signed lower left H. 36 cm - W. 26 cm (excluding mounting board) Provenance: Armand Avril Collection (1925–2026), Cotignac (Var) Marcel Avril (1887–1944) was the father of the artist Armand Avril (1926–2025). The collection of fifteen works we are presenting, drawn from the family collection, offers a wonderful opportunity to rediscover a major figure in the visual arts in Lyon during the 1930s and 1940s and beyond, the ambitious and extremely rare works of an artist deeply committed to the cause at the heart of the turmoil of World War II. Marcel Avril, a collector of paintings and primitive art as early as the 1920s and 1930s, was a man of very strong political convictions in the spirit of the Popular Front, a defender of the workers’ cause, and a peace activist. His paintings bear witness to his commitments and offer a deeply tormented vision of a world with apocalyptic overtones. The profound strangeness of his painting—unparalleled in our eyes—manifests itself in a striking blend of Expressionism and Surrealism, imbued with a deeply personal, incantatory mysticism. In Lyon, he exhibited with the Témoignage group, under the auspices of Marcel Michaud, in 1940, 1941, and 1943. In January 1944, his political activism led to his arrest by the Gestapo, followed by his deportation to Germany, where he died in December of that same year. Since then, his work has been shown only once, at the exhibition “Groupe Témoignage 1936–1943” at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, exactly 50 years ago, in 1976.
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