Portrait d'enfant, Circa 1983

Lucien-Philippe Moretti  

French painter born in Suresnes in 1922, died in Étretat in 2000. 

A student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 1940s, he was appointed associate member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1947. Moretti lived in Montmartre for several years. He left the Butte in 1963. 

His life in Montmartre has definitely marked his work. Moretti came every day to the Place du Tertre, to the Crémaillère, a meeting place for rapins, young people, portrait painters, guitar players, chess players, but also dancers who came to dance in the evening, as well as lovers embracing under the arbors of the interior terrace. His drawings immortalize the youth of the 50s, the hippies of the 60s. These are the characters that he then paints on canvas in a wild party, a carnival populated by clowns, pierrots, girls with short skirts and boys with long hair.

Moretti decides to revive through his painting a mythical, Edenic era. His scenes are crowds of characters out of his dreams in very symbolic representations that will be his trademark and will open the doors of a great career.

He exhibited in all the major galleries in Paris, notably at the Roussard Gallery, and then also abroad from the 1960s onwards (New York, Miami, Montreal, Tokyo...).