RODDE Michel

Michel RODDE (born 27 April 1913 in La Grand-Combe (Gard) and died 20 February 2009 in Aiguèze (Gard)) is a French painter and figurative lithographer.

Born in La Grand-Combe, with his ancestors Carle and Horace Vernet, Michel Rodde, after obtaining the Bachelor of Philosophy, studied law at the Faculty of Law in Paris. In 1936, Michel Rodde joined the 22nd Alpine fighter battalion (2nd company) and joined the garrison of Nice for two years, and in 1938, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was colleague of the poet Saint John Perse1. He finds the 22nd B.C.A. in September 1939, when he was mobilized with the rank of sergeant, he took part in the Battle of the Ailette (1940) and then in the Battle of the Marne3. It was then during the occupation that he discovered the painting.

In 1946, Michel Rodde returned to the diplomatic administration while attending the studio of Édouard Georges Mac-Avoy of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. In 1956 he resigned from the administration to succeed Robert Humblot as professor of drawing at the École des métiers d'art, and in 1965 to Jean Aujame at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

Michel Rodde's travels are related both to his exhibitions abroad and to his pictorial research: New York (1960 and 1964), Egypt (1974 and 1979), Japan (in 1989 where he stayed in Itsuku-shima, Kyoto, Nara and Tokyo), Norway (where in June 1989 he was particularly interested in Lofoten Islands).

He lived in a division between his apartment on Rue Lecourbe in Paris and, beginning in 1968, Montségur-sur-Lauzon (Drôme).

Michel Rodde died on February 20, 2009 and rested at Pont-Saint-Esprit cemetery.