Claude Venard‘s L’Atelier du Peintre (1962), presented at Galerie Hurtebize, embodies the expressive power and rigorous construction that characterize his work. This oil on canvas, included in the catalog of the Villa Tamaris Pacha exhibition in La Seyne-sur-Mer in 1991, perfectly embodies his pictorial language: a rigorous construction in which the balance between abstraction and figuration imposes itself with force.
A vibrant tribute to the painter's studio
In this studio scene, Venard deconstructs forms to reinvent pictorial reality, somewhere between masterful abstraction and free figuration.
He assembles the familiar elements of his world – easel, brushes, color tubes, playing cards and sheet music – in a structured tangle of powerful black lines and angular geometric shapes. His universe oscillates between poetic everydayness and controlled chaos, where every object becomes a pretext for plastic exploration.
Venard‘s studio is more than just a place to work: it’s a vibrant theater where objects dialogue, respond and merge in energetic composition.
In this work, the artist pays sensitive, pictorial homage to his own creative space, both sanctuary and experimental ground.
An expressive technique: the art of sculpting paint
As usual, Claude Venard‘s work is richly textured, almost sculptural. The paste is generous, the impasto assertive. Every brushstroke, every zone of color testifies to controlled energy. Here, the artist applies a dense, impastoed material, creating a relief-like texture that lends the whole a tactile force and expressive intensity. The surface of the canvas becomes a plastic playground where the paint takes shape, rises, thickens, until it surpasses the simple flatness of the painting.
This way of exalting matter gives the work a striking physicality, as if each element had been shaped by hand.
A composition built on color and form
The chromatic palette, characteristic of his work, plays on strong contrasts: deep greens, blues and vivid reds clash with the neutral tones of the background, while light seems to spring from light and ochre areas.
A product of the post-Cubist movement, Venard‘s painting is free, solidly constructed and free of academic conventions. His work on L’Atelier du Peintre is a striking demonstration of this: rigorous in structure, free in expression. L’Atelier du Peintre thus continues his commitment to painting that is both rooted in the cubist tradition and resolutely turned towards a personal, expressive vision of reality.
An emblematic work
This painting testifies to Venard‘s stylistic maturity in the early 1960s. It powerfully captures not only the place of creation, but the very spirit of creation: teeming, chaotic, luminous.
Through L’Atelier du Peintre, Claude Venard offers us a powerful look at his own craft, with the sincerity and intensity that made him one of the great names of twentieth-century French abstraction.
Claude Venard honored at Musée Jean Couty - Lyon
Recognition of Claude Venard‘s work continues to grow, as evidenced by the exhibition “CLAUDE VENARD. Le post-cubisme du bonheur”
at the Musée Jean Couty in Lyon until May 4, 2025. For the first time, the Musée Jean Couty is devoting an exhibition to him, bringing together some of his most emblematic and singular works.
👉 The work can be seen at the Hurtebize Gallery. For further information, please contact us.
Céline FERNANDEZ
With 15 years' experience in marketing and communications, Céline has worked for major companies such as Hopscotch, Groupe Galerie Lafayette and several communications agencies. For more than 4 years, she has been managing the gallery's communications through the website, social networks and traditional media.