(1920-2005)
The Gallery represents the Estate of the artist Huguette Arthur Bertrand since 2012.
An important artist of Lyrical Abstraction, Huguette Arthur Bertrand is an active member of the post-war Parisian art scene, rubbing shoulders with Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung, Serge Poliakoff, Jean Dewasne, Martin Barré and Pierre Dmitrienko among many others.
Diable – c. 1962
Oil on canvas
81 x 100 cm / 31.9 x 39.4 in.
Déferlant rouge et gris sur brun – c. 1970
Oil on canvas
130 x 162 cm / 51.2 x 63.8 in.
Signed lower left,
Signed and titled on reverse
Torrent – c. 1980
Oil on canvas
195 x 130 cm / 78 x 52 in.
Signed lower right
Titled and signed on the reverse
Passage I – 1982-1983
Oil on canvas
80 x 80 cm / 31.5 x 31.5 in.
Signed “Hug Arthur Bertrand” lower right
Signed, titled and dated “Hug Arthur Bertrand passage I 1982-83” on reverse
Remous – 1984-1986
Oil on canvas
130 x 162 cm / 51.2 x 63.8 in.
Signed “Hug Arthur Bertrand” lower left
Signed dated and titled on the reverse
Voie directe – 1992
Oil on canvas
162 x 130 cm / 63.7 x 51.1 in.
Signed “Hug Arthur Bertrand” lower right
Signed, titled and dated on the reverse
Exhibitions
HUGUETTE ARTHUR BERTRAND
SOLO SHOW
MARCH 23 – JUNE 16, 2018
Publications
HUGUETTE ARTHUR BERTRAND – ROBERT HELMAN
LE PAYSAGE IMAGINAIRE
Digital publication – Text by Mathilde Gubanski
WOMEN IN ABSTRACT ART:
FIVE WOMEN – FIVE ARTISTIC VISIONS
Digital publication – Text by Mathilde Gubanski
HUGUETTE ARTHUR BERTRAND
ELATED PAINTING
PAINTINGS AND COLLAGES FROM THE 1960S
Digital publication – Text by Astrid de Monteverde & Mathilde Gubanski
LYRICAL ABSTRACTION
PARIS 1945-1995
Published by the Galerie Diane de Polignac and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts
Exhibition Catalog
English – 21 pages – nov. 2014
Videos
Virtual visit of the exhibition “Women in abstract art: Five women – five artisitic visions”.
From March 8 to May 29 2021
Virtual visit of the exhibition “HUGUETTE ARTHUR BERTRAND ELATED PAINTING”, with Dominique Gagneux, Chief Curator of Heritage.
From September 10 to October 16, 2020.
Artwork Analysis
“Huguette Arthur Bertrand, Cela qui gronde”, an analysis by Astrid de Monteverde
A young woman painter in Post-war Paris
Born in 1920 in Écouen, Huguette Arthur Bertrand spent her childhood in Roanne (center south of France) and settled in Paris shortly after the war. She attended the Académie libre de la Grande Chaumière. A fellowship allowed her to spend a year in Prague between 1946 and 1947 where she had her first solo exhibition. She met the painter Joseph Sima there.
A rare painter woman in the essentially masculine artistic landscape of Post-war Paris, she immersed herself fully in the buzzing art world of Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Huguette Arthur Bertrand became friendly with publishers, critics (Michel Ragon) and abstract artists, those of the Galerie Denise René: Jean Dewasne, Jean Deyrolle, Serge Poliakoff; and with Martin Barré, Pierre Dmitrienko, James Guitet, Kumi Sugaï and John F. Koenig. On Saturdays she would visit Jean-Michel Atlan’s studio with Marcelle Loubchansky. She participated with passion in this artistic effervescence, marked by lively debate between figurative and abstract art, but also between supporters of “cold” abstraction and those of “warm” abstraction: one geometric, the other gestural, lyrical, guided by a free and spontaneous gesture.
In the 1950’s, Huguette Arthur Bertrand’s success in Paris
During the 1950s, Huguette Arthur Bertrand applied the full force of her art and the confidence of her artistic vocabulary made from stripes that hatch, streak, give rhythm to compositions. A powerful way of painting that confuses. A solid form of painting that marks a determined, independent character, “a type of painting that does not appear feminine at all; even muscular painting, strong, dynamic in a way that would appear masculine […]” as Michel Ragon wrote.
The woman artist Huguette Arthur Bertrand’s explosive work, which was definitively abstract from 1950, presents an audacious palette, full of colour that gradually evolved towards more dramatic shades, concentrated in a range of ochre, brown, orange-red.
In 1949 and 1950, Huguette Arthur Bertrand participated in the key exhibition Les Mains Éblouies (The Dazzled Hands) at the Galerie Maeght alongside Pierre Dmitrienko, and with Cobra artists in 1950 (Pierre Alechinsky, Corneille, Jacques Doucet).
In Paris, from the start of the 1950s, several galleries exhibited the painter woman’s work: Galerie Niepce, Galerie La Roue, Galerie Arnaud above all…
Huguette Arthur Bertrand regularly participated in the main salons of abstract art in Paris, at the Salon de Mai from 1949 until the late 1980s, at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles until the 1990s, and at the Salon d’Automne.
The year 1955 was decisive for her: she won the famous Prix Fénéon (Fénéon award).
In 1956, Huguette Arthur Bertrand participated in the Festival de l’Art d’Avant-Garde, a major event held at Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille.
Huguette Arthur Bertrand’s international recognition
Her works began to travel abroad: a solo exhibition was held at the Brussels Palais des Beaux-Arts in 1956, and crossed the Atlantic: in 1956, the Meltzer Gallery in New York organized for the woman artist a solo exhibition in 1956, praised by critics, then a group show the year after: North and South Americans and Europeans. Also in 1957, the painter Huguette Arthur Bertrand participated in the exhibition New Talents in Europe at the University of Alabama. In 1958 and in 1960-61, she exhibited at the Howard Wise Gallery in Cleveland.
The works of the painter woman Huguette Arthur Bertrand continued to be exhibited in many different galleries and art events all over the world: in Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, England, Italy… as far as Japan, Venezuela, Mexico and Cuba.
In 1962, Jean-Marie Drot interviewed Huguette Arthur Bertrand in her studio as part of L’oeil d’un critique program, directed for French television (ORTF).
The woman artist Huguette Arthur Bertrand in Michel Ragon’s circle of friends
Close to the art critic, Michel Ragon, the woman artist met his circle of friends: Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung, Gérard Schneider, Zao Wou-Ki, Victor Vasarely, among others. Together they worked on a collection La Peau des Choses (the skin of things), a portfolio of prints published in a limited edition by Jean-Robert Arnaud in 1968 in honour of their friend Michel Ragon.
Huguette Arthur Bertrand’s maturity work
Starting in 1971, Huguette Arthur Bertrand worked with tapestry for over a decade (she received commissions from the Mobilier national) and became interested in monumental mural painting. At the turn of the 1980s, her gestures became more and more liberated, and calmer, summarized in subtle white traces, airy like a breath on the canvas. The woman artist Huguette Arthur Bertrand died in 2005.
© Diane de Polignac Gallery / Astrid de Monteverde
Translation: Jane Mac Avock
Huguette Arthur Bertrand Faq
On the HUGUETTE ARTHUR BERTRAND FAQ page, find all the questions and answers dedicated to the modern art painter Huguette Arthur Bertrand.
