“[One] must kill the anecdote, destroy the subject and rebuild everything.”
Born in Paris to a mother who was an embroiderer and a father who was a musician, Gen Paul, whose real name was Eugène Paul, entered the artistic sphere at a very early age, becoming an apprentice upholsterer at just thirteen. The sudden death of his father two years later drew him further into the vibrant artistic milieu of Montmartre. Self-taught, he devoted himself daily to drawing and learned through contact with older artists, who quickly recognised the liveliness of his eye and the assurance of his line.
In 1914 he volunteered for military service during the war, in which he lost his right leg. Decorated with the Military Medal, the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour, he was a hero of the nation, yet remained somewhat marginalised within society. Unable to continue his career as an upholsterer, he began signing his first canvases depicting views of Montmartre and the celebrated Moulin de la Galette, an emblematic site of artistic and bohemian life.
Gen Paul developed a fascination with the dynamism of great cities, which he sought to convey in his work. Despite his disability, he travelled between France, Italy and Spain, where he discovered and admired the Old Masters. Between 1925 and 1929 the artist was particularly prolific, producing numerous works representing performers and especially musicians, in memory of his father. His growing reputation gradually brought him into the spotlight, even as he succumbed increasingly to alcohol, seeking escape in intoxication. This period came to an abrupt end around 1930 following a crisis of delirium in Madrid. Only in 1943 did he resume his artistic production, creating numerous gouaches and developing new techniques over the following decade. The creation of the present work most likely falls within this period.
Closely associated with the circle of the “painters of Montmartre” in Paris, Gen Paul was influenced by artists such as Maurice de Vlaminck, Maurice Utrillo and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He took pleasure in depicting what surrounded him, fascinated by the simplicity of everyday life. As he declared: “The past is death. The future, for me, does not exist. Only the present matters. The coming day is already miraculous”2. Such words illuminate the spirit of his work: an intense thirst for life shaped by his disability. His paintings celebrate the beauty and vitality of life. In the present work, Gen Paul chooses to depict cyclists before a garden and an autumnal grove. Bicycles, symbols of freedom and speed, evoke movement and the frenetic circulation through the crowded streets of great cities. It is a freedom he could not truly experience himself, yet the desire for it is palpable in the movement infused into this gouache.
The cyclists are rendered through simple yet skilful nervous strokes of gouache, rapidly applied to convey movement. Through vivid and shimmering colours, the artist reflects an era imbued with hope and joie de vivre, in which fascination with modernity is expressed. His works reveal enthusiasm, sincere emotion and sensitivity before scenes of everyday life, which he transforms into splendid and joyful spectacles. This transformation of reality is also visible in the disproportionate depiction of the cyclists, who are suggested primarily through form and colour. Through these various characteristics emerges a desire to proclaim to the world an unreserved will to live. Unlike Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943), who employed similar pictorial means - thick impasto, distortion of subjects and expressive brushwork - Gen Paul expresses his sincerity through a radiant optimism.
Gen Paul thus embodies the determination of an artist marked by personal tragedy to celebrate life in all the virtuosity it can offer. For him, works of art should inspire admiration, irony and amusement before they seek to denounce. His approach reflects a sublimated expressionism at a time when many artists gave themselves over to anxiety and despair in the face of a damaged society. As Henri Bing observed in 1928, “Gen Paul turns towards life […] he expresses his era, its style and the spirit of the moment” 3. In this work, the dynamism that emerges seems almost to anticipate the gestural energy of action painting later developed by a new generation of artists such as Willem de Kooning (1904-1997).
Capucine Correia-Leseve and M.O
1,2,3. Gen Paul, Gabrielle A, and Carla a Marca, Gen Paul : 1895-1975 : rétrospective [exh. cat.], Menton, Palais Carnolès, musée des beaux-arts, 8 July -10 October 1993, Paris, Les Amis de Gen Paul, 1993.
