Alfred Manessier

Art Brokerage: Alfred Manessier French artist: b. 1911-1993. Alfred Manessier (5 December 1911, Saint-Ouen - 1 August 1993, Orléans) was a non-figurative French painter, stained glass artist, and tapestry designer, part of the new Paris School and the Salon de Mai. In 1937 at the Paris International Exposition, the French government appointed Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay to represent avant-garde art in Paris transportation centers such as Air Palace and Railways Palace. The couple was given the task to employ and reside with 50 unemployed artists for March and April to create a substantial project of 19,000 square feet of artwork. Among the artists were Bissiere, Jean Bertholle, and Manessier, who worked on four murals. The following year he married painter Therese Simonnet. In 1939 Manessier was called into military conscription, as a technical draftsman. In 1940, expecting the birth of his son, he found work as a farmhand to support the growing family but by 1941 he returned to Paris to exhibit in the Gallery Braun show "20 Young Painters" that ushered into France the non-figurative movement. Despite the abstract style centered in what the occupying Germans deemed "degenerate" modes, and despite Manessier's teaching at the anti-authority and anti-indoctrination organization Young France, the painter was not censored or molested. The Young France organization prepared youth for work at the end of the German Occupation, with a teaching staff that also included Jean Bazaine, Jean Vilar, Jean Desailly, Andre Clement. Manessier left teaching in 1943 for painting full-time. During this year he made a 3-day visit to the Trappist monastery in Orne. Demoralized by the Occupation and war, at the monastery he was deeply moved by the ancient garb and art, chants and worship, rhythms of work and silence by the monks. He was the victim of a car accident in Loiret on 28 July 1993, and died four days later at the Source hospital in Orléans. Listings wanted.