Mid Century Bernard Dufour (french,1922-2016) Oil on Canvas. Features a depiction of a harbor scene, with boats docked, backed by cityscape. Signed along the bottom right. Ib frame measures 18"x23"x2". Weight 3 pds. Dufour originally studied agricultural engineering. During the Occupation, he was pressed into war labor. He was sent to Germany with Alain Robbe-Grillet and there they met Claude Ollier. In the winter of 1944-45 he went to the University of Heidelberg and studied Eugène Delacroix and Stéphane Mallarmé. After the war he copied works of Michelangelo and Tintoretto in the Louvre. His first solo exhibition was at the Galerie Maeght in 1948, followed by exhibitions in the Jeanne Bucher gallery between 1951 and 1953. Motivated by these successes he soon signed an exclusive contract with the art dealer Pierre Loeb. He collaborated with many writers, including René de Solier, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Georges Lambrichs, Paule Thevenin and Alain Jouffroy. In the later fifties, he began to attract attention outside France; in 1959, he participated in the second Documenta exhibition in Kassel. From 1960 he turned from abstract to figurative painting; initially self-portraits and mournful figures, later scandalous nudes. In 1961 he opened a studio in an old mill on the Aveyron River in Foissac, where he also lived. He took part in the Venice Biennale in 1964. From this time he formed lasting friendships with other writers of the literary avant-garde, such as Pierre Guyotat, Denis Roche, Catherine Millet and Jacques Henric.

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