Jean-François Gromaire
by Hubert Reeves
Jean-François Gromaire and I share a taste for nature and imposing landscapes.
Like him I like great plains and drifting clouds roaming in infinites skies.
His paintings are suffused with calm and solitude, and a subtle anguish pervades in the silent vastness of great spaces.
Jean-François Gromaire
by Stéphane Audeguy
It is somewhow impossible to introduce anybody to Jean-François Gromaire's work. It speaks for itself. It does not require esoteric knowledge from you; neither does it exclude you. Above all, each of Jean-François' paintings recreates a singular, poetical, powerful world. That is why I consider Jean-François Gromaire one of the greatest painters of our time.
The apparent simplicity of his work derives from a subtle savoir faire. He refuses any kind of decorative easiness. The figures and buildings that inhabit his paintings have a very strong, enigmatic and beautiful presence. They may evoke, at first glance, the work of Chirico, the metaphysical dimension of the landscapes; to me they echo even more the work of Giorgio Morandi. These landscapes do not belong to any known country, and yet we know them. They are not a reflection of a lost paradise. They're not either post-apocalyptic. And yet they are infused with art history ( that his grandfather was the famous Marcel Gromaire is certainly not a coincidence).
His work is extremely mundane, but in a very peculiar sense : Jean-François Gromaire is a man of the world. And it is not suprising that he has practiced in his career many cratfworks, from carving wood to piloting helicopters.
More than a thinking form of art, it is an invitation to a peaceful meditation. A specialist may be able to discuss the intricate links of Jean-François Gromaire's work with the Far eastern "traditional arts", or may compare it to the architectonic lyrism of Debré and Soulages. But you don't have to know about it. All you need is to let yourself merge into these beautiful paintings where man is at the right place, that is to say essential though unnecessary, and even, sometimes, absent.
The full spaces of Jean-François Gromaire
by Valérie Tordjman
When you see a painting you have to be able to embrace the landscapes and close your eyes. Open them now, and see what Gromaire can see. This resemblance is an image, it is a painting, you are right here, in the painting. It might be a be a diptych, a triptych, a series, it is always a fiction. And here stands Gromaire, with his winged brushes made of wood and shadow. Caught in the sound of clouds.
Notes on a life's path
by Jean-François Gromaire
My first painter impression was a smell, crystallized by light. That light crossed my grandfather's studio, as he sat on a high stool his eye absorbed in the curiosity of what he had just put in colour.
A smell, oil and turpentine, supported an absolute silence, and the hardly discernible smile of the painter endowed him with such a softness and determination that the only words that came to my mind were sacred and freedom. Immersed in that scene, barely twelve years old, I swore to myself never to submit to anything but the constraint of the pleasure of the Soul and the freest choices.
His artist's soul gave birth to peasants, shepherds and lumberjacks, seamen and aviators, motorbike and horse riders. Colourful parties, dark and noble scenes, dignified and naked women, deserted moors, theatrical mountains, aligned sacred stones. Portraits of strong souls, collectors, tradesmen and aesthetes. He painted skies like dreams are told, erected buildings and objects as an architect and designer. He had a fine intelligence, a free soul albeit worried about the world. He only acquired his broad knowledge through curiosity. At the failing of many of his contemporaries observing their own lives, he laughed benevolently. Years passed sheltered by that man, by our discussions and visits to the Louvres museum until the day I went away, a day he left me the choice of, giving me the precious advice to seize the day and welcome every event, every sight, as an additional wealth, a gift to go further.
I didn't know at that time that the history of that wandering was engramed, like an initiatory programme. I would unwillingly, step-by-step, exercise every profession painted by my grandfather, roam his cities, his moors and forests, meet his characters or endorse their office.
I learned fast, often mimicking gestures and words, to at last move beyond that mimetic phase and let my method take place. The truth of my senses remained steadfastly individual.
Along these years, leaving the moors for the forests, the seas for the skies then the skies for the big citys, I committed to memory scores of images and lights, well aware of the magic of links between people, places and situations. I sometimes drew, often wrote and worked at learning, through jobs seemingly unrelated.
I didn't have in mind my grandfather's painting but his words and the wonderful example he gave of curiosity, observation and the rigorousness of his work.
I had read some works about inner adventure, that wandering owed nothing to chance, meeting a psychoanalyst and great thinker, pushed me to the so hard to go through doors of working upon oneself.
In the course of that long work I took conscience of the path I was following. I met people who would provide me with the tools to painting, among them a very dear friend and my master, a great artist and architecture professor.
Years of work lined up in the design of spaces and outfitting thereof left every next day more room for painting.
It is after my first official show in Paris that I met the people I since work with.
Americans, Europeans, Taiwanese, all of them have in common their curiosity and a remarkable generosity. Their noticeable freedom would deserve that one knew how to paint it.
That is an other story; a passionate necessity while obviously my painted spaces are empty, yet utterly full.
The noise of clouds
by Jean-François Gromaire
My first painting was an oil on canvas. It pictured a few people sitting on the grass around a major character. You can easily guess by his stature that this man is the master, the teacher, the protector. Next to him, a woman with brown hair holds his hand. In the background stands an old, well-drawn building, surrounded by powerful trees. This character is my friend Hubert Reeves, the astrophysicist, mathematician, writer and thinker. The woman by his side is his wife Camille, and the people around them are artists, researchers, writers, musicians, professors.
It is my dear Camille Reeves who encouraged me to start painting. And though I lost track of this first canvas, it marked the beginning of a new voyage, a new life.
When I was a kid, I used to frequent museums and art galleries with my grand-father, the painter. As I threw myself into art books, one thing stroke me. Very few paintings dealt with the night, and its lights. And at the same time I was aware of its eerie symbolism.
Certain paintings of Caravaggio, Soulages, Caspar David Friedrich, Goya, Latour, Edward Hopper et Francis Bacon amazed me by their beautiful light and the subtleness of the shades. They showed, in a magnificent way, light and shadow. It suddenly came to me that if someday I allowed myself to paint, I would be looking for the light.
My very first paintings were a series of night landscapes. I used to walk in Paris, travelled on roads, kept in mind scenes of empty cities, and empty roads where light is thrown on emptiness. From this moment on I started a long work on black, dark blue, red and brown. The notion of an "initiatory" series came to me as an evidence. I had to disclose the light in volumes and great spaces, and vast landscapes with constrating skies where sometimes architectonic buildings and small characters dwelled. Here, the initiatory sense comes in relation to natural space, sometimes inhabited by some powerful buildings.
The series of landscapes I painted between 2007 and 2008 follows the same initiatory path. The writer Valérie Tordjman gave it the following title : The Sound of Clouds. It echoes the title of my friend Stéphane Audeguy's beautiful novel, A Theory of Clouds. At that time I hadn't met him yet, but this would lead me to a new friendship which I am grateful for. I consider Stéphane Audeguy and his wife Johanna as people to which a gifted life owes respect and tenderness.
This series is again a trip in imaginary or remembered spaces. These memories are those of long crossings through the world, associated with various musics. Stops in isolated places where I always bring books and sketch books. It is from these song bits and books that I remember the title of my paintings. In most cases, what the songs or the books say applies to what I paint and I strive to think that my unconscious makes the right choice.
I landed once with a bush plane on a long and dry plateau. The sun was close to the horizon. It was my first working day in Africa. I turned off the engine. Then the silence, the sky and the earth regained their strength. All you could see were a few figures far, very far, walking on a ridge to a village, and to grain silos.
One day as I was driving in North America, I stopped the car next to a disused silo. I was listening to Beethoven's Concerto Number 5. The colour of this high wooden building -red surrounded by white-, was reflecting the sunset to a dark blue sky. Around us other silos, separated from one anoher by several miles, aimed at meeting the sunset.
This scene in my mind, and the things that will complete it, as much as the freedom of the unconscious, was and will be the source of many artworks, figurative or abstract.
The emotion lies in many forms, my condition being to aim at Beauty.
Since many years I am aware of the need to respect the environment. Though I often used in my career a lot of mechanical devices, including the helicopter when I was a pilot, I do my best now to use as much ecological devices and methods as possible.
If I had to be a pilot again, I would use the solar energy. I keep in my mind amazing images of these flights, and I went to isolated place that can only be reached by pilots, walkers, and alpinists.
The wonderful can be found in many places, many people. In winter nights in the Paris countryside, I sometimes crossed the figure of the forest and this salutary emptiness that the poet Gregory Corso mentioned once.
At that point, again, the sound of clouds was solely the music of silence.