“I love Venard because he’s created a universe where Godot has arrived, where anguish has disappeared from the universe.” poet Jacques Prévert, c1960.

 

Having spent time in a prisoner of war camp, Claude Venard was initially consumed by the post-war despair which pervaded a liberated but traumatised Paris defined by Sartre’s existentialism, but he gradually found solace in forging a world of vibrant joyful colours lavished with thick layers of paint in exuberant enthusiasm, from Brittany to the Côte d’Azur. This bold visceral synthesis of Cubism, Fauvism, and Expressionism decribed as “Figurative Abstraction” in 1957 by the critic Waldemar George, established Venard as a leading light of the post-war era.

 

In his twenties Venard had fled from the orthodoxy of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris after only 48 hours. In 1938 he signed the “Rupture” manifesto which called for the revival of emotional intensity in art, and participated in the "Forces Nouvelles" group alongside Gruber and Tal-Coat at the Galerie Billiet-Vorms.

 

After the war Venard's work first relfected the “miserabilist” mood, while French culture became gripped by a crisis of existential angst and futility, beautifully epitomised by Samuel Beckett’s 1949 play “Waiting for Godot”. But by the 1950s Venard had begun to establish his distinctive more vibrant expressionistic style developed through a cubistic system that oscillates between abstraction and naturalism, that was widely celebrated by the critics including André Salmon, the champion of Picasso, and the influential writer Jacques Prévert.

 

Venard went on to exhibit extensively, including at the galleries Bernheim-Jeune, Drouant-David, and Charpentier, in Paris; while in America he became a regular exhibitor at the Romanet Gallery, Kleeman Gallery, The Fine Arts Association, the and Knoedler Gallery.  Further exhibitions were held in London at the Leicester Gallery, 1950, 1954; Lefevre Gallery, 1955; and Arthur Tooth, 1959. As well as the Venice Biennale in 1956.

 

During his career Venard established a truly international reputation with shows from Canada to Japan, and is represented in many major public collections including the Tate Modern, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Whitney Museum, New York, and the museums of Basel, Düsseldorf, Montreal, Buenos Aires, Munich, Dallas, Mexico City, Grenoble and Tokyo.

 

HFA’s exhibition presents a selection of major works from Venard’s oeuvre, and follows the recent exhibition “Claude Venard: Le Post-Cubisme du Bonheur” at Musée Jean Couty; and the publication of a special edition of Beaux Arts magazine focussing on Venard.