Albert Gleizes

Painter, engraver, illustrator, author, Albert Gleizes left a masterful work.
In his youth, he worked in his father’s furniture design studio. In 1906, he was a founding member of the Créteil Abbey group, a house of writers and artists. In 1908, he met Delaunay and Metzinger with whom he wrote in 1912 a treatise «Du cubisme». In 1911, in the famous room 41 of the Salon des Indépendants, he participated in the consecration of the cubist movement. He exhibited at the Section d’Or and the Salon d’Automne until 1914. Demobilized in 1915, he married Juliette Roche and stayed in New York. He exhibited in Barcelona in 1916 with the Picabia and Marie Laurencin. He oscillates in his painting between the influence of the researches of Picabia, Duchamp and Blue Reiter. Back in France in 1919, increasingly concerned about social and intellectual issues, he taught a few students «Painting and its laws» in order to transmit and develop the discoveries of Cubism in painting. From 1923 to 1926, he developed his theories on Translations-Rotations and Cadences in painting. In 1927, he revived in Moly-Sabata, in Isère, the experience of the Abbey of Créteil with the participation of artists-craftsmen. The ceramist Anne Dangar and the painter Pouyaud settled there. He gradually retired from the Parisian artistic milieu. In a process of spiritual research, he joined the Abstraction-Creation movement in 1931, seeing in artistic abstraction a way to fight against the materialism of thought. He gives a series of lectures in Warsaw, London and at the Bauhaus. The year 1934 marked a major milestone in his research on the rhythmic denouement of painting, and, in parallel with these concerns, wall decoration was an important part of his work, which he exhibited in 1937 alongside Léger and Survage. In 1939, the couple settled permanently in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, at the Mas des Méjades where they created a community of artists. Albert Gleizes converted to Catholicism and wrote «L’homme devenu peintre» which summarizes all of his research. Many intellectuals and artists will come to meet him. In 1950, he illustrated the «Thoughts of Pascal», which he considered his artistic testament.
Albert Gleizes has written several theoretical works in which he outlines his concerns and research. He is considered with Metzinger as a precursor and theorist of the cubist movement. Subsequently, he was more interested in composition and dynamics than in form. In 1953, for the last time during his lifetime, he participated in an exhibition on cubism organized by the M.N.A.M. His works are presented in the largest museums in the world and in the most important collections. The Estrine Museum permanently exhibits a retrospective of his works and holds several works by this artist considered an important representative of the French cubist movement.