{"id":316,"date":"2011-08-24T17:12:32","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T17:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/saddlerivergallery.com\/?page_id=316"},"modified":"2015-08-01T02:10:28","modified_gmt":"2015-08-01T02:10:28","slug":"andre-hambourg","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/saddlerivergallery.com\/?page_id=316","title":{"rendered":"Andr\u00e9 Hambourg"},"content":{"rendered":"

(1909-1999)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"andrehambourg[1]\"<\/a>During their lifetime few artists attain the international acclaim which has been accorded to Andr\u00e9 Hambourg, the distinguished laureate of French contemporary art.\u00a0 His paintings hang in more than fifty museums in France and other countries. Private collectors from all parts of the world have acquired his luminous marine and beach scenes, his poetic compositions of Venice, his landscapes and still lifes – works which brilliantly transcend the art of Impressionism.\u00a0 His name and paintings are synonymous with the highest standards of French art.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Hambourg is that rare creative talent, a complete artist.\u00a0 Apart from his oils, pastels, watercolors and drawings, he has developed an enviable reputation in the fields of lithography, engravings, ceramics, mural decorations and illustrations for deluxe editions of books by such important authors as Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, George Duhamel, Sully Prudhomme, Henri de Regnier, Henry de Montherlant, Joseph Kessel and many others. \u00a0Year after year, his one-man shows in Paris, Honfleur, Cagnes-sur-Mer, Brussels, London, North Africa and in the Wally Findlay Galleries in New York, Chicago, Palm Beach and Beverly Hills, have added to both his fame and stature in the art world.<\/p>\n

One of France\u2019s most honored artists, Hambourg received his country\u2019s highest tribute in 1951 – the Cross of the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor – presented to him by Vincent Auriol, President of the French Republic, at a reception in his honor at the Elys\u00e9e Palace.\u00a0 In 1961, he was made an Officer of the Legion of Honor by Andr\u00e9 Malraux.\u00a0 Among an impressive list of awards and honors, he also holds the Croix de Guerre which he received for his wartime services from 1939 to 1945, and another tribute of particular distinction – the 1961 Grande M\u00e9daille de Vermeil of the City of Paris.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Hambourg was born in Paris in 1909.\u00a0 He began his career in the arts at the Ecole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure des Arts D\u00e9coratifs where he studied sculpture in the studio of Niclausse.\u00a0 In 1927, he enrolled in the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts as a student of painting with Lucien Simon.\u00a0 Zbrowski, Modigliani and Soutine\u2019s dealer, introduced him to Henri B\u00e9n\u00e9zit, who presented Hamburg\u2019s first important one-man show in Paris in 1928.\u00a0 Hambourg was only nineteen years old at the time,\u00a0after which he became active in the important Paris Salons.<\/p>\n

With his friends Francis Gr\u00fcber, Brabo, Launois, Garbell, he participated in the art movement of Montparnasse.\u00a0 Derain, Friesz and Kisling encouraged him.\u00a0 In 1930, he had his second one-man show in Paris, and in 1931 his increasing prominence was indicated by his being made a member of the Committee of the Salon de l\u2019Art Fran\u00e7ais Ind\u00e9pendant and the Salon de l\u2019Oeuvre Unique.\u00a0 His third one-man show in Paris in 1932 could be termed the final phase of his early work.\u00a0 In 1933, Andr\u00e9 Hambourg received the first honor of his developing career.\u00a0 He was awarded the Prix de la Villa Abd-el-Tif and, as a result, he went to North Africa for the first time.\u00a0 There he became aware of the importance and power of light, that myriad brightness, that intangible luminous quality through which strange shapes merge into a haze.\u00a0 Against this shock of brilliant sunlight, he found that poverty stood out in all its bleakness, and this he recorded on canvas.\u00a0 From 1933 to 1935, he painted in the southern region of Algeria and had one-man shows in Paris, Algeria and Oran.<\/p>\n

Following his military service in 1936, Hambourg executed a large mural for the Algerian Pavilion at the 1937 Exposition Internationale of Paris, an achievement for which he was made a Laureate of the Exposition.\u00a0 Through 1939, he was occupied with painting in Morocco and at that time exhibited eighty paintings in a one-man show at the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Outre-Mer in Paris, as well as having exhibitions in North Africa.<\/p>\n

While in North Africa in 1939, he was mobilized as a military reporter and artist for the Free French Forces, working on the staff of the Journal du Commissariat \u00e0 la Guerre<\/em>.\u00a0 Special missions on combat vessels led to his appointment as a war correspondent in 1944 with the staff of inter-allied SHAEF.\u00a0 In this capacity he participated in the campaigns of France, the Atlantic Front, Alsace and Germany.\u00a0 As a result of these experiences he wrote and illustrated two books which appeared in 1947:\u00a0 Berchtesgaden-Party<\/em> and D\u2019Alger \u00e0 Berchtesgaden<\/em>.\u00a0 In 1944, he also became the first French delegate to the \u201cFour Arts Aid Society\u201d and for his contributions to French artists at the time of the liberation of France, he was made a Chevalier of the Ordre de la Sant\u00e9 Publique.<\/p>\n

Hambourg\u2019s adventuresome career in the French Army and Navy resulted in his receiving not only the Croix de Guerre, but also the honor of Laureate of the Salon de la Marine, Honorary Painter of the Army and Official Painter of the Marine Ministry.<\/p>\n

In 1946, Andr\u00e9 Hambourg resumed his painting career.\u00a0 From that year on his unremitting work and a succession of exhibitions in France and in other countries demonstrated his ever-increasing, absolute search for movement and light.\u00a0 He had spent many years until then working in\u00a0 monotones and mutations of light.\u00a0 Now, however, he began moving towards a perception of color by means of pastel, and in 1957, he made his first trip to Venice where the transition reached its completion.\u00a0 A year later an exhibition of his paintings of Venice was held in Paris.\u00a0 The movement, the color and the vibrancy of Venice came to life in these works.<\/p>\n

Through the 1960\u2019s Hambourg traveled extensively, visiting London for a one-man show, going to Morocco where he illustrated La Rose de Sable<\/em> by Henry de Montherlant; to Lebanon and Turkey on the cruiser Colbert, sponsored by the French Ministry of Marine; to Venice where he sketched and painted.\u00a0 During the summer of 1964, Trouville-sur-Mer honored Hambourg with the first highly important retrospective exhibition of his work covering the years from 1927 to 1964.<\/p>\n

I<\/strong>n 1967 Hambourg made his first trip to Israel and his stay in Jerusalem had a lasting influence upon him.\u00a0 While there he illustrated Terre d\u2019Amour et de Feu<\/em> by Joseph Kessel.\u00a0 When he returned to France, an exhibition of his illustrations for La Rose de Sable<\/em> was presented first in Paris and later in Toulouse.<\/p>\n

I<\/strong>n 1970, his far-reaching travels took him to Israel with a return visit to Jerusalem; Russia, with visits to Moscow and Leningrad; Scotland; the Ivory Coast of Africa, where he spent the major part of his time in Abidjan and Senegal.\u00a0 In addition to another one-man show in Paris, he had an extremely important retrospective exhibition.\u00a0 Five hundred of his works formed the prestigious exhibition at the Maison de Culture in Bourges.<\/p>\n

In 1971, he again traveled to the Ivory Coast, and in 1972, went to the United States, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg.\u00a0 In the United States he had a one-man show at Wally Findlay Galleries in Palm Beach.\u00a0 That same year he received a special honor – that of being chosen to paint a monumental mural for the Audience Chamber of the new European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.\u00a0 In January, 1973 this panoramic work was unveiled at an opening ceremony in the H\u00f4tel de Ville attended by the President of Luxembourg, Robert Lecourt, and the Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg.<\/p>\n

Early in his career, Hambourg became active in the Paris Salons, starting with his first exhibition at the Salon de Tuileries in 1929 and followed by the Salon des Ind\u00e9pendants, the Salon d\u2019Automne, les Peintres T\u00e9moins de leur Temps, the Salon du Dessin, the Salon de la Peinture \u00e0 l\u2019Eur and the Salon des Terres Latines.\u00a0 In 1962, a documentary film was made about his life and work titled Andr\u00e9 Hambourg, the Painter<\/em>.\u00a0 He has also been the subject of two books:\u00a0 Hambourg<\/em> by Michel Droit, and Andr\u00e9 Hambourg<\/em> by Andr\u00e9 Flament, with a preface by Raymond Cogniat.\u00a0 So many of France\u2019s most qualified art critics have evaluated and praised the art of Andr\u00e9 Hambourg that even a partial list of their names constitutes a galaxy:\u00a0 Germain Bazin, Maximilien Gauthier, Max Pol Fouchet, Waldemar George, Raymond Cogniat, Pierre Descargues, Andr\u00e9 Warnod, Jean-Paul Crespelle, Raymond Charmet, Marcel Mithois, Dr. C. L\u00e9v\u00eaque, Guy Dornand, Jacqueline Colliex, Ren\u00e9 Barotte.<\/p>\n

To appreciate Hambourg\u2019s art one must understand its development and its transitions from the youthful dark canvass, the scenes of conflict and the sudden perception of light, to landscapes in which the mind can rest in beauty, in fantasies freed from constraint.\u00a0 In all his wide-ranging travels, Hambourg carries his own artistic ambience with him.\u00a0 Venice, Paris, Honfleur and even London have the same spiritual and artistic climate for Hambourg.\u00a0 Color assumes the same importance and proportion, and the muted light, so unlike that of North Africa or the Mediterranean, accentuates its impact and detail.\u00a0 With this change of emphasis his scenes differ from his earlier paintings, not in sensitivity, but rather in perception and aim.\u00a0 It is the transient, the immense universal mutability of world and sky to which he unceasingly returns.<\/p>\n

Normandy and Venice reflect this dramatic change.\u00a0 He transforms these scenes on canvas into a spontaneous world; the least touch of color is a suggestion rather than a form.\u00a0 A painter of atmosphere, he owes to an almost rustic knowledge of the elements that certainty which characterizes his work, which enables him to harmonize the tree with its reflection in the water, the ship with the sea, the human figure with the sand.\u00a0 Everything is alive, not only the surging crowds on a beach, but the water, the sands and, above all, the skies which change the atmosphere form one canvas to another.\u00a0 The relationship of the sea and the sky, the winds and the waves are poetic statements.\u00a0 The air moves freely above his clouds; one senses not only the movement but also the wind, almost the very temperature.\u00a0 If Boudin and Jongkind have a successor, the lone contender is Hambourg.<\/p>\n

Life in all its guises has always been the overriding passion of Hambourg\u2019s work.\u00a0 In the development of his art, perhaps it is not life that has changed but his apprehension of it so that, from being the painter of its sorrow he is now the painter of its joy, its dynamism, its constantly renewed creation.\u00a0 He catches the color of the particular transient moment, held and magnified in a dynamic mutability.\u00a0 By means of his own reactions to life and the spontaneity of human contact he relays to the world what the world expects from the artist – the possibility of renaissance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(1909-1999)   During their lifetime few artists attain the international acclaim which has been accorded to Andr\u00e9 Hambourg, the distinguished laureate of French contemporary art.\u00a0 His paintings hang in more than fifty museums in France and other countries. Private collectors … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-316","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/saddlerivergallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/saddlerivergallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/saddlerivergallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saddlerivergallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saddlerivergallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/saddlerivergallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/saddlerivergallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}