Claude Routier

Claude Routier was born on March 12, 1943. "He was from Sète, as one would say from France, and he was very surprised when people asked him where this city was." He would not leave his city until he was 27 to pursue a career in National Education. He wanted to be a pediatrician, he would become a physical education teacher, not out of desire, but out of a need to earn a living.

At the age of 20 he received a box of paints as a gift: "it was his entry into painting, decisive and without return". His first personal exhibitions took place in the 70s.

At the age of 41, he stopped his job as a teacher to devote himself exclusively to painting and writing because "he wanted his painting to read like a book."

A lasting friendship binds him to Pierre François, one of the fathers of Free Figuration. Like him, he feels like a "brother in painting" of the artists who preceded him.

He works without a model, without any preliminary sketch, drawing or eraser. In his canvases, pastels and murals, his expression is always spontaneous, without codes or barriers.

"This magician of images and poet of colors" put down his brushes for good in November 1999, he died at the age of 56.