Pictorial approaches1944–1952
Éboulement / Landslide 1952, 25½ x 21½ ins
oil on canvas
“Shortly before the
Liberation, I went to Paris to undertake a year–long course in drawing,
in anticipation of joining the teaching profession. But, psychologically
disturbed, I adapted badly to my surroundings.
Through a friend, Claude Dupont, I made the acquaintance of a singular character
who transformed the course of my life, Lanza del Vasto. Lanza del Vasto,
a writer and yogi pilgrim not long back from India, where he had been a
disciple of Gandhi. He had just founded a spiritual community in Paris and
suggested that I visit.
There, I discovered craftsmanship and the art of meditation. For almost
three years, I followed his teachings based on yogic discipline and, most
significantly, underwent an initiation into sculpture with Henri Martin. Not being religious, I search for a sense of meaning in my
life.…” CLAUDE
BELLEGARDE: JOURNAL
JULIEN ALVARD « BELLEGARDE » CIMAISE REVIEW, 1952
A painting by Bellegarde is a crisis. It is a given, primary moment, a kind of liberation following stasis, where dynamism is caught up in its own momentum, resulting in an accumulation of compact masses in tumultuous agitation. Color is captured in the stroke of a tousled brush. It would be possible to speak here of automatism if this word could still be said to have meaning. Of a very singular automatism in any case; that of possession.
“I had entered into painting as one enters into religion, for a rigorous asceticism. I was not, for all that, seeking a moral order. No doubt a long stay in a sanatorium had made me sensitive to life’s tiny expressions of movement and passing instants…”
CLAUDE BELLEGARDE: JOURNAL
