VERCRUYCE Bernard

Bernard VERCRUYCE (born 1949) is a French painter. A self-taught painter, he was discovered by Anatole Jakovsky, the art critic specialized in naive art. After different professions - hairdresser, auto-school instructor, brochanter and car dealer - this last profession allowed him to have more time, he began painting regularly since 1971. His first exhibition in 1973 took place with his friend the naive sculptor Robert Noël at the Cultural Centre of Cergy Pontoise. Since then, he has been present in many museums in France and abroad. In the mid-1980s he began to paint mainly cats becoming an animal artist. In 1994 he was named Academician of the Cat by the Accademia dei gatti magici of Rome for all of his work. In 2000 the Musée d'Orléans devoted a retrospective of his work to him. In 2005 it was the Anatole Jakovsky International Naif Art Museum in Nice that devoted a retrospective to his engraved work. Excerpt from Wikipedia online encyclopedia.