Claude Venard
(French, 1913-1999)

"Still Life with Siphons"

oil on canvas
signed lower left, old stamps and inventory stickers en verso.
Framed.
21-3/4" x 18", framed 29" x 25-1/2"

Provenance: Trosby Galleries, Palm Beach, Florida; Collection of Polly and Ed Renwick, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Notes: Works which are at first overly seductive should not be trusted. I do not mean by that that ugliness is the greatest of virtues but that a work should impose by its power, without the aid of pleasing artifice.
Claude Venard

A native of Paris, Venard attended the Ecole des Arts Appliques after eschewing lessons at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts after only two days. He joined with fellow students Pierre Tal-Coat and Andre Marchand to form "Forces Nouvelles", though Venard soon found his artistic sensibilities at odds with the strictures of the group. Best described as a post-Cubist, Venard approached his paintings from the emotional, portraying the essence of the subject rather than adhering to the facts of its physicality. He favored a palette of bold, nearly raw color applied in heavy impasto, often with a knife, manipulating the thick layers of paint to create richly textured canvases. His preferred subjects were still-lifes and cityscapes, and the work offered here is an example of Venard at his most accomplished. Adored equally by critics, collectors and his fellow artists, Venard exhibited widely and consistently throughout his life and was a member of the Salon des Independents, Salon des Tuileries and was a founding member of the Salon de Mai.

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