Exhibition: Louis Magre

He was born in 1955 at the foot of the Montagne Sainte Victoire near the town of Aix en Provence. As a young man he had a passion for the arts and took many drawing and architecture classes to develop his skills. Initially he studied the figurative and portraiture styles but after a time the impressionistic styles of the French Masters such as Sisley, Pissarro and Monet absorbed his imagination.

After a lot of work perfecting the use of light in his paintings Magre now focuses more on impressionistic reliefs of the many different landscape settings that exist across France. The light of Provence permeates the atmosphere with the warm tones dear to Cézanne and Van Gogh. Across the area between Les Baux de Provence and Saint Paul de Vence, there are a variety of landscapes and vegetation that inspire him: red earth, the mistral blowing on the trees, the summer warmth, and the bright colors that come from wild flowers, sunflowers and lavender. In his relentless hunting of bright images, Magre still feels filled by what he sees and inspired by what he discovers, eternally in love with his land. He paces the scrubland from Châteauneuf le Rouge until Puyloubier, then bypasses the Sainte Victoire Mountain to return to Vauvenargues in the footsteps of Picasso … The red earth that collects gently on Tholonet road, close to Castle Black (the last home of Cézanne) is very useful for creating unique reliefs composed of natural materials. Like Monet he is particularly fond of deep water reflections so most of his landscape paintings have an element of water in them.

Similarly, his love of the Normandy coast and Britain allows him to capture the atmosphere and the smell of a beach at low tide, the flight of seagulls on a cloudy sky, nature so wild that the contrasts are amazing. He knows how to compose his palette gradient with unique tones to this region. He makes us breathe the sea air, feel the kelp at low tide, contemplate this unique light in the rolls of the waves, all uniquely transparent and yet mysterious.

In addition to his country side landscapes and florals he has developed a cosmopolitan interest which many of his collectors have encouraged. Slowly, but surely, more recently his paintings of Paris, have become popular because he exhibits the unusual angles at the corner of an alley on the Ile Saint Louis, by a barge moored in the snow at Pont Neuf, or within the Arenes de Lutece or stairs of Montmartre.