Lightness of Being | François Aubrun 1934-2009 Aix-en-Provence

The Lightness of Being Franรงois Aubrun 1934-2009 Aix-en-Provence

The Lightness of Being Franรงois Aubrun 1934-2009 Aix-en-Provence

Cover: Franรงois Aubrun French, 1934-2009 Untitled, #418 See page 32 Left: Franรงois Aubrun French, 1934-2009 Untitled #692, 2005 Signed verso 51 x 38 inches Framed: 53 x 40 inches

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Untitled, #527 Oil on canvas, 1995 Signed verso 31 1⁄2 x 31 1⁄2 inches Framed: 33 1⁄2 x 33 1⁄2 inches

François Aubrun in his upstairs studio in the church of Saint Joseph, Aix-en-Provence, France 4

The Lightness of Being François Aubrun 1934-2009 Aix-en-Provence “The work of Aubrun consists in fixing onto various surfaces that which cannot be fixed, cannot be captured…elusive: light, with its thrilling life, its advances and retreats, its shimmering iridescence.”

Like the earlier 19th and 20th century works in the first half of this catalogue, the ethereal paintings of François Aubrun evoke The Lightness of Being.

Jacques le Rider described the artist as one who sought to “capture light and shadow, the vibrations and the breath of space, movement and immobility.” Aubrun painted without cease for sixty long years. From the studio he installed in the church of Saint Joseph in Aix-en-Provence, next door to Cézanne’s studio and overlooking Mont Sainte-Victoire, he expressed the inexpressible: the transparency of the morning mist “when in the morning it is more heavy than the sky above, and throughout the day all turns around until it is the sky that is heavier.” His art is profoundly Naturalist. He searched the ever-changing sky for its “liquidity” in order to evoke all its light, and all its silence.

François Aubrun was born at Boulogne-Billancourt in 1934. He studied painting at the Section d’Or of the Academy of Paris under the tutelage of painter Jean Souverbie. It was while travelling around France with his grandfather at the age of fifteen that he first discovered Aix-en-Provence. Two years later, he studied sculpture there with Paul-Françoise Niclausse, and in 1951 stayed, drew and painted in the region. In 1953, he entered the preparatory class at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied painting, and from 1954 to 1961 he took courses in monumental art and lithography.

– Georges Duby, Summer 1993

In 1956, he married Martine Bassot, who would give birth to their six daughters, Caroline, Isabelle, Marie-Pascale, Dorothée, Delphine and Segolène. He exhibited his paintings for the first time in 1957 in Paris.

In 1960, he took up residence at the estate of Saint Joseph along with his wife, and continued to work there until his death.

Aubrun was made a citizen of Honour of the city of Aix-en-Provence in 2007. He taught painting at Luminy, at the University of Marseilles, and then at the National School of Decorative Arts of Nice. He was appointed Director of the École des Beaux-Arts of Toulon from 1974 to 1980, then held tenure as professor of painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris until 1992. Wherever he went, he drew and he painted: Greece in 1966; Egypt in 1982; the Bay of the Somme in 2001. He exhibited regularly in France and abroad, notably in the United States, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. François Aubrun died in Paris in February 2009.

It is no surprise that Aubrun’s studio was a light-filled chapel. Le Rider suggests that each one of Aubrun’s canvases involves the viewer in a search where, “little by little the eye can make out there in the depths of his paintings a moving shape, an imminent event, a new day beginning (or even the nightfall that erases all).” We hope that you experience just that, as you enter the illuminated, sacred world of François Aubrun.

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Untitled, #431 Oil on canvas, 1987 38 1â „8 x 51 1â „8 inches Signed verso Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

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Untitled, #830 Oil on canvas, 1970 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches Signed verso Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

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Untitled, #252 Oil on canvas, 1970 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches Signed verso Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

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Untitled, #582 Oil on canvas, 1990 51 1/4 x 77 1/2 inches Signed verso Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

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Untitled, #466 Oil on canvas, 1978 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 inches Signed and dated lower right

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Untitled, #418 Oil on canvas, 1983 51 x 51 inches Signed lower right Provenance: The Estate of the Artist 13