CLAUDE WEISBUCH

(Thionville 1927 - 2014 Paris)

Seated Man

Signed lower right Weisbuch

Oil on canvas

47 x 47 inches (120 x 120 cm)

Born in 1927 to a Romanian father and a French mother, Claude Weisbuch underwent his artistic studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nancy. His premier solo exhibition took place at the Galerie Saint-Placide in Paris in 1957 and he quickly gained international recognition after receiving great critical praise for his show Extraordinary Pantomimes at the Galerie Hervé in Paris. He continued to exhibit frequently thereafter, including presentations in London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto. Widely known for his expressive and innovative prints, Weisbuch received several commissions for various book publications, including new illustrated editions of The Chevalier de la Charrette by Chretien de Troyes, Praise of Madness by Erasmus and Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In 1960 the artist was hired as a professor of engravings at the École des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Étienne, a position he held until 1987. In 1961 Weisbuch won the Prix de la Critique, and in1968 he was accepted into the Society of Painter-Engravers, founded in the late 19th century to promote the practice of printmaking. He earned the award of the Legion of Honor in 1997 and in 2011 the Orangerie organized a retrospective of his work.

Weisbuch’s oeuvre focuses largely on the male figure, which he often portrays in movement or in a swell of palpable emotion. Throughout his career he returned repeatedly several favorite subjects, including musicians, equestrians, opera singers, and scenes inside artists’ studios. A lover of music and the theater, some of Weisbuch’s most interesting and nuanced works capture the reaction of an audience to a performing musician or a painting. The state of the mind always took priority over the physical appearance of the artist’s subjects, revealing the rawness of humanity, often rendered through a chaotic line or partially abstracted image. Regardless of medium, the technique appears spontaneous and mercurial, reflective of the artist’s physical process.   

With a limited palette of ochres, grays, browns and whites, the current painting masterfully captures a fleeting moment in time; a film still of a man in motion. Likely belonging to a series of works from the early 1980s titled Calligraphie de la figure, Seated Man embodies the drama and mystery that Weisbuch instinctively imbued in his portraits. The subject of this painting is unidentified, however images of a similar sitter can be found in the artist’s collection of prints, seated in the same distinct chair (Figure 1). Weisbuch favored distorted views of realities, elongating and steepening the perspective of his figures and their environments. These effects are repeated throughout his body of work, and a comparable figure to ours is also included in a 1980 print titled Salon de musique (Figure 2).