LEPRIN Marcel

Marcel François LEPRIN (born 12 February 1891 in Cannes) is a French painter and lithographer.

Orphan, Leprin lives a difficult youth in Marseilles, he is delivered to himself and leads a life of bohemian. It is collected by the Salesian Fathers of Don Bosco who initiate, noting his gifts, to drawing and lithography.

He starts painting on the old port. At the age of 22, he moved to a career in the bullfighting in Barcelona, but had to give up fighting in the First World War.

In 1921, at the age of thirty, he joined Paris and wandered on the hill Montmartre where he sympathised with the artists met in the bistros, he lived from the sale of drawings and pastels to tourists. In 1924, he signed an exclusivity contract with Henri Bureau, manager at Montmartre, which offered him to help him and promote his career (it was at Henri Bureau that he became friends with painter Frank-Will).

In 1926 he made a journey through the French countryside and painted many landscapes or views of towns and villages. Despite the success of his two exhibitions at the Druet gallery in Paris in 1928 and 1931, Marcel Leprin remained a lonely and depressed painter, he fell into drinking and drugs and died in 1933 at the Tenon Hospital.

Marcel Leprin died prematurely at 42, leaving about 700 canvases, painting according to the circumstances of his life, we can distinguish three periods whose different styles express his mental and material situation, the Marseilles period, consisting in particular of large decorative murals, the Montmartre period, rather dark and commercial, the period of trips to the province, warmer and creative. He is also featured in bullfighting paintings.

Leprin's paintings are mainly visible today at the Musée national d'art moderne and the Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, the Musée Carnavalet, the Musée de Montmartre and the Musée du Petit Palais de Genève.