Emile Compard, Vue du Port d'Oslo, Oil on Canvas, Framed

Born in Paris in 1900 and died in Nogent-sur-Marne in 1977, he is a French painter and sculptor.
Émile Compard was a student of the École des beaux-arts de Paris, of the Académie Julian (1916) and would later attend the studio of Pedro Araújo. In 1919 he produced his first work, a sculpture.

In his first, figurative period, Compard was influenced by Pierre Bonnard and with whom he exchanged paintings based on an idea from Félix Fénéon: the three men became friends. Painter of nudes and landscapes, he is fascinated by automobiles. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1926, then, the following year, mounted his first personal exhibition presented by Fénéon in a gallery in Montparnasse.

During the years 1920-1930, he regularly visited Brittany, first Le Faouët, then Doëlan from 1936. He was encouraged by Matisse and particularly by Jean Paulhan.

In 1930, he participated in a group exhibition at MoMA and at the Sezession in Munich, Berlin and Düsseldorf. In 1934, he won the North African prize awarded by the city of Paris. In 1936, a group exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris gave him the opportunity to bond with Pierre Tal-Coat.

He created a 132 m2 fresco for the 1937 Paris Universal Exhibition, the preliminary study of which is kept in the collections of the Center Pompidou.

In 1947, his work entered the National Museum of Modern Art, the same year of its foundation.

After the war, Compard experienced a very different second period: enamored of philosophy and influenced by Taoism, he moved towards non-figuration after 1946 and became one of the leaders of post-war French abstraction. He is close to Pierre Tal Coat, Georges Mathieu and especially Jean Degottex and Henri Michaux. The critic Charles Estienne, the gallery owner Julien Alvard and the writer Jean Lescure, among others, devoted texts to him.

In 1960, he exhibited at the Venice Biennale and in 1967, he succeeded Jean Fautrier as a member of the Félix Fénéon foundation.

Molded frame in gilded wood65.5 x 88.5 x 3 cm