Exposition - Jacques Cordier (1937 - 1975) : le peintre secret de Saint Tropez - des sentiments au pinceau

The first retrospective devoted to the artist in Saint-Tropez, this is an opportunity to rediscover a talented and sincere artist who is nevertheless little known to the general public.

A painter of international renown during his lifetime, Jacques Cordier's career was all too short, but he translated the fascination that Saint-Tropez and the Mediterranean held for him with delicacy, passion and depth. Trained as a draughtsman in Paris in the 1950s, Cordier's early works gave no hint of the colorist qualities he developed after his marriage to Simone Armando Barbier in 1966.

From the first works drawn in Paris in Indian ink, which testify to a strong temperament, to the vaporous views of Venice painted after the shock of discovering William Turner, the painter's career is marked by rapid breaks, a sign of an art in constant questioning, guided and softened by the young man's feelings for his wife. At the end of the 1960s, austere urban compositions gave way to the infinity of Mediterranean blue, almost without transition. The intense light dissolves the landscapes in a final attempt to capture the artist's vivid emotions.

A discreet and sensitive man, a self-taught painter who listened avidly to Henri Dunoyer de Segonzac's advice in his Ponche gallery between two sessions in the cool of his studio, Jacques Cordier evolved in the midst of a glittering, never flashy, society: he attracted the sympathy of the artists who settled at La Ponche for the summer: directors, painters and writers accompanied his life without influencing it: his art has remained authentic and unique.

The Saint-Tropez retrospective aims to pay him a unique tribute, as the artist has not been exhibited here since his death in 1975, fifty years ago.