Jeune fille brune, Circa 1940

Louis Latapie  

Louis Latapie, born July 11, 1891 in Toulouse and died July 2, 1972 in Avignon, was a French painter and engraver. He enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1910 where he took lessons from Jean-Paul Laurens.

During the same period, he attended the Académie Julian then, from 1911, the Académie Ranson where he met Paul Sérusier. From 1922, the artist presented his first exhibitions in numerous salons and in the Salon des Tuileries.

In the company of Georges Braque (French painter, sculptor and engraver), Bissière, Ozenfant, the artist founded the association of “Castors de Montsouris" in 1923, to build original houses with a cubic structure.

The painter's objective is to achieve a sort of harmonious synthesis between painting and poetry. The female nude will be one of his favorite subjects. In 1939, Latapie was mobilized and returned to Paris in 1940. At the end of the 1950s his painting turned towards abstraction, where the nudes were disarticulated until they became intertwined forms.

An international reputation

Louis Latapie is a highly recognized artist on the international scene having exhibited throughout the world throughout his career. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1924 and in numerous exhibitions in the major Paris Salons. His works are now represented in many important public collections such as those of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the Center Georges Pompidou or the Museum of Modern Art in Geneva.