Gaston BERTRAND (1910-1994) - Lot 72

Gaston BERTRAND (1910-1994) Abstraction, pen drawing, signed and dated 52 lower right, confirmed on the back, +-35 x 27cm. Note: Born in Wonck-sur-Geer, Gaston Bertrand studied at the evening classes of Saint-Luc Bruxelles, then at the Académie de Bruxelles with Henri Van Haelen and Anto Carte, and finally at the Académie de Saint-Josse-ten-Noode with Henri Ottevaere and G. Fontaine. There, he befriended Anne Bonnet and Louis Van Lint, with whom he exhibited from 1938 at "Art Jeune", organized by Charles Pry. Winner of a Prix de Rome scholarship in 1937, he stayed in Paris before co-founding the groups "La Route libre" (1940) and "Apport". In 1945, he became a founding member of La Jeune Peinture belge alongside Anne Bonnet, Louis Van Lint, Jo Delahaut, Marc Mendelson and René Barbaix, taking part in all their exhibitions. Galerie Apollo devoted several monographs to his work in the 1940s. From 1950 onwards, Bertrand settled in the modernist studio designed for him by Jacques Dupuis in Uccle, and developed a refined, structured style in which reality is reduced to a few essential lines and colored areas, without ever tipping over into total abstraction. His emblematic works include L'Homme au Jablot (1964, MRBAB) and his views of the Paris metro. A teacher at the École Saint-Luc from 1956 at Jean Guiraud's request, he trained Luc Mondry, Francis de Bolle, Boris Semenoff, Francis Herth, Camille De Taeye, Colette Duck, then Christian Rolet, Claude Willot, Claude Foubert, Michel Gehain and Jacques Kievits.