Sammy Davis Jr, 2002

Bernard Rancillac   Master Artists

Bernard Rancillac is a French visual artist, painter and sclptor; he was born on August 29, 1931 in Paris. He lives and works in the Paris area.

"Rancillac works as a painter; he knew how to quickly overcome the dependence on the photographic document and recreate, by the transposition of space and photo lighting in equivalent terms, but into painting. His colour palette (...) is divided into contrasting plans with vivid accents. Their articulation in the spatial organisation of the canvas always follows a strict sense of rhythm and measure that could be an example even for the masters of geometric abstraction. This stylistic attitude situates the figurative work of Bernard Rancillac close from the cold abstraction of the hard edge. It opposes itto the figurative art of the '50s, that avoided the worries of the time through an expression that was more interested in the past, searching for a lost hardiness, and having lost its meaning. The practice of Rancillac is at the crossing between art history and history; the fact that it has always expressed life through art and brought art into life, with determination and without any compromise, refusing pictorial conformism, through the most accessible medium to those who are usually the most disadvantaged when confronted to art, will always be recognized as a great merit of the artist."