Alfred Manessier
(1911–)
(–1993)
Alfred Manessier
1911–1993
Alfred Manessier (1911-1993) was a French painter, tapestry maker, and stained glass artist. Sacred art and ancient religious art and practices heavily influenced his own style of mosaic-like painting. His work was displayed often throughout his career, and he received numerous commissions from various institutions, theatrical productions, and churches.
Manessier grew up in a creative family. His grandfather was a decorative stonemason and his father and his uncle studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Abbeville. Although Manessier wished to study painting, his father allowed him to attend school in Paris in 1929 on the condition that he would study architecture as it was a more stable occupation. However, Manessier switched to studying painting in 1935, just before his father’s death in 1936.
In 1937, he was included in a group of 50 avant-garde artists under the employ of Sonia and Robert Delaunay to create a 19,000 square foot (1,800 square meters) artwork for the Paris International Exposition. Two years later, at the outbreak of World War II, Manessier was conscripted as a technical draftsman, however, in 1940, he was able to find alternative work as a farmhand in order to support his family. In 1941, he returned to Paris to exhibit his works in an exhibition titled 20 Young Painters at Gallery Braun which helped bring the non-figurative movement to France. Although Manessier’s abstract style could have been called degenerate by the occupying Nazi forces, he was not censored during the War and was able to work with the Young France organization. This organization helped teach youth and prepare them for life and work beyond the German Occupation.
After leaving his teaching job in 1943, Manessier became a full-time painter. Later that year, he visited the Trappist monastery in Orne and became inspired by the ancient art, chants, clothing, and worship practices of the monks. He was intrigued by the purity of the monks and their connection to nature in contrast with the broken and exploded world in the wake of occupation. This perspective of purity, nature, and love influenced a series of abstract paintings in a mosaic-like style that used bright colours surrounded by heavy black grid patterns.
For the rest of his career, Manessier continued to explore abstraction and other artistic media as new forms of expression. He received a number of significant commissions for churches, galleries, and theatre productions. In 1969, he was commissioned by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, and during a visit to Canada in 1967, he became inspired by the ongoing discussions surrounding undeveloped land use and the lifestyle and art of the Inuit peoples, which he understood as relatively untouched by Western culture. In 1993, Manessier died at a hospital in Orléans, four days after a car accident in Loiret, France.