BERTHOMMÉ SAINT ANDRÉ Louis

Louis BERTHOMMÉ-SAINT-ANDRÉ spends his early childhood in Saintes, and starts as an architectural student under Georges Naud, in charge of historical monuments in Charente Inférieure (now Charente-Maritime). In 1921, he becomes a student of Fernand Cormon and Jean-Paul Laurens at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. He is awarded the Prix Abd-el-Tif in 1925. A friend of Jean Launois, besides his recognized portraits, he paints Algiers and the Kasbah. His studies of women are reminiscent of those by Eugène Delacroix, but while his luminous inspiration comes from the Algerian sun, his style is more Cézanne-like than purely orientalist. He leaves Algeria in 1928, only to return in 1931. Known for numerous illustrations and posters, he paints landscapes of Haute-Provence and Île-de-France in addition to his Algerian canvases. He is considered the most modernist of the Abd-el-Tif painters of his generation. He created erotic illustrations for works by Verlaine, Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Diderot, Voltaire, Musset, Jean-Louis Miege, and others. Like André Hambourg, he joins the Resistance and contributes to Vaincre. He travels to sub-Saharan Africa in 1970, to Senegal as an artistic collaborator. He dies suddenly at his Parisian home on October 1, 1977.