Sans Titre, 1968

James Guitet  

James Guitet is a famous French painter. He was born in 1925 and died in 2010 and was part of the lyrical abstraction movement. He studied at the Académie Jaudon in 1946 and then at the Nantes School of Fine Arts in 1944. He dedicated much of his life to teaching at the same time as working as an artist.

Contemplating his work draws the observer out of time and into a calm, silent, simple place. This humble and discreet artist liked to represent a minimalistic Loire through soft suggestions of pure shapes and colours. Architecture was a field that he was passionate about, he was in fact to sculpt « white books » in order to model volumes the way an architect would.

He gradually freed himself from form to represent the essence of an object. From the '50s onwards, he worked in this subject increasingly and especially through engraving. His work as a teacher, at the Fine Arts Schools of Angers and Versailles and at the U.E.R. Sorbonne added to his knowledge and the progression of his art.

His work appears in the Nantes Museum of Fine Arts, the French National Museum of Modern Art, the Paris Museum of Modern Art, the Musée Cantini in Marseille, and the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse. His work is also exhibited at the Paris and Venice Biennales.