Yves Brayer

Born in 1907 in Versailles and died in 1990 in Paris, Yves Brayer spent most of his childhood in Bourges. When he moved to Paris in 1924, he studied at the Academy of Montparnasse and at the School of Fine Arts. From his first years of studies, he exhibited his work at the Salon d'Automne and at the Salon des Indépendants. He then obtained a scholarship by the state which allowed him to go to Spain, where he made a major discovery, the work of the big masters at the Museum of Prado. He never stop travelling all throughout his life, always keeping Paris as his homeport. Yves Brayer's approach is undertandable in the historical context in which he evolved. He belongs to a group of artists who between the two wars, needed to keep a strong link with reality, hence the pictorial trends that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. If the artist can not be attached to any particular movement, he approaches the New Realism movement. His work which goes through the twentieth century is marked by richness and diversity. Painting was his first love. He has a real fascination for mediterranean landscapes, of a pure and wild nature. Particularly, landscapes of Provence and Camargue, which is like a Garden of Eden for the artist. In parallel to his activity as a painter, he designed sets and costumes for the opera, practiced illustration, engraving and mural decoration. His particular exhibitions has built him a name in numerous countries such as France, as well as in other countries in Europe and in the United States. The National Library presented "Yves Brayer, Engraver" in 1977 for its seventieth anniversary, and the Postal Museum dedicated an exhibition to his work for the publication of a stamp he was asked to do in 1978. The Museum Yves Brayer was inagurated in 1991 in Baux-de-Provence.