Thibaut de REIMPRE (1949-2023) Suite of eight woodcuts. Sign - Lot 582

SALE II

ATELIER THIBAUT DE REIMPRÉ

Tuesday, November 7, 2023 - 2:30 pm

Drouot, Room 15

Public exhibitions, Room 15

Saturday November 4th from 11am to 6pm

Monday, November 6, 11am to 6pm

Tuesday, November 7, 11am to 12pm

Lots 404 to 588

Thibaut de REIMPRE (1949-2023)

Thibaut de REIMPRE discovered painting at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and then at Jacques YANKEL's studio between 1968 and 1971. From 1974 onwards, the young painter unveiled his first figurative paintings, populated by denervated and depulpated figures, like eviscerated silhouettes, brutally offered up to the world. But what connection can these Baconian-looking bodies have with the abstract style towards which he gradually slides? The link is that of flesh, of a physical reality, and therefore of the expression of form. Oil gives way to acrylic, which is more watery and therefore easier to rework. His canvases are structured into angular compositions, with intertwined lines surrounding voids. It was during this second period that Thibaut de Reimpré met gallery owner Nane STERN, who offered him his first exhibitions and fairs in the 1980s. At the same time, he acquired a studio on Boulevard Berthier in Paris, which he occupied for the rest of his life.

Thibaut de Reimpré was part of the emulation of the second generation of French abstraction, and more specifically lyrical abstraction, surrounded by Michèle DESTARAC, Pierre CELICE and Jean-Pierre SCHNEIDER, among others. Throughout his career, he exhibited with his friends Jean-Pierre PINCEMIN and Alain BONNEFOIT, many of whose works can be seen on his walls. At the end of the 1990s, the artist entered his third period, both lyrical and expressionist. It was at this point that the artist began a fifteen-year collaboration with Suzanne TARASIEVE. Reimpré extended his creative process to paper, which further accentuated the light emanating from his compositions. The gesture is more determined, the colors more vibrant.

On his Sarthe estate, Reimpré created a garden from scratch, later classified as remarkable. A place of meditation, it finds both spiritual and creative fulfillment in this département, where the painter will set up a new studio. In 2011, he created the stained-glass windows for the commune of Crannes-en-Champagne, which critic Manuel Jover sums up as follows: "Their great intensity, their pictorial and emotional effervescence, which, in a modern, radical mode, echoes the effusive fervor of Baroque altars [...] There is no doubt that faith finds its reward in these Baroque openings through which the turbulent infinite flows.

This vacation is an ode to abstraction. It presents the artistic and intellectual journey of an artist of his time, through a selection of 180 prints, paintings and sculptures. 50 years of work, some 165 exhibitions and fairs demonstrate that Reimpré was a viscerally committed painter.

Ugo LEVOYER