Born in Villeréal, south-west France, Roger Bissière started to paint at 17 after studying at a college in Cahors. From 1905 to 1910 he frequented the Academy in Bordeaux and then came to Paris where he studied under Gabriel Ferrier.
He reportedly went to Algeria, Rome and London between 1911 and 1918 and worked as a journalist after the First World War. A year later he befriended several painters such as André Favory, Georges Braque and André Lhote and started to write some articles on art matters, notably «Notes on Seurat» in 1920, «Notes on Ingres» and «Notes on Corot» in 1921.
From 1925 to 1938, though convinced that nothing could be taught in the field of art, he worked as a professor at the Académie Ranson where he had Bertholle, Manessier, Le Moal, Elena da Silva and Pellan as pupils.
Affected by a lung disease he came back in 1938 to his native village and found an interest in nature. In 1939 he settled in Boissiérette but the outbreak of the Second World War affected him much.
Also affected with a glaucoma he could no longer paint until 1944. After the war he however managed to resume work and produced tapestries with curious collages of textiles, which led him to meet international fame.
Although almost blind, Bissière continued to work finding nevertheless in his eye disease a way to tackle colours and forms. He took part in many collective exhibitions from 1910, first at the Salon des Artistes Français then at the Salon d'Automne from 1919, at the Salon des Tuileries from 1924 and finally at the Salon des Indépendants from 1927.
Born in Villeréal, south-west France, Roger Bissière started to paint at 17 after studying at a college in Cahors. From 1905 to 1910 he frequented the Academy in Bordeaux and then came to Paris where he studied under Gabriel Ferrier.
He reportedly went to Algeria, Rome and London between 1911 and 1918 and worked as a journalist after the First World War. A year later he befriended several painters such as André Favory, Georges Braque and André Lhote and started to write some articles on art matters, notably «Notes on Seurat» in 1920, «Notes on Ingres» and «Notes on Corot» in 1921.
From 1925 to 1938, though convinced that nothing could be taught in the field of art, he worked as a professor at the Académie Ranson where he had Bertholle, Manessier, Le Moal, Elena da Silva and Pellan as pupils.
Affected by a lung disease he came back in 1938 to his native village and found an interest in nature. In 1939 he settled in Boissiérette but the outbreak of the Second World War affected him much.
Also affected with a glaucoma he could no longer paint until 1944. After the war he however managed to resume work and produced tapestries with curious collages of textiles, which led him to meet international fame.
Although almost blind, Bissière continued to work finding nevertheless in his eye disease a way to tackle colours and forms. He took part in many collective exhibitions from 1910, first at the Salon des Artistes Français then at the Salon d'Automne from 1919, at the Salon des Tuileries from 1924 and finally at the Salon des Indépendants from 1927.
He also took part at the Universal Exhibition in 1937 in Paris and at the exhibition of the Masters of Independent Art 1895-1937 at the Petit Palais where he exhibited «Forest with a dog» painted in 1919, «Head of a young girl» of 1920 and a still life with a glass. The 1947 Salon de Mai paid homage to Bissière in showing three of his paintings, «Woman with a newspaper» and two untitled compositions.
In 1954 and 1955 he was invited at the Venice and Sao Paulo Biennials and the Documenta in Kassel in 1959 and 1964. Bissière had many one-man shows, the first taking place at the Berthe Weil gallery in Paris in 1920, which led him to be under contract with the dealer Paul Rosenberg. He then exhibited at the Druet gallery in 1923 while the Drouin gallery showed many of his paintings and tapestries in 1946.
Many retrospective shows were dedicated to this artist, in Germany in 1957, in 1959 at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, then in Hanover, Eindhoven, Amsterdam, Lucerne, New York in 1961 and at the Jeanne Bucher gallery in 1962.
After his death retrospective exhibitions took place at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1986 and at the Museum of the Abbaye Ste Croix in the Sables-d'Olonne in 1997.
Bissière also worked as an engraver and illustrator and also produced stained glass projects. He notably conceived stained glass panels for the Metz cathedral in 1960 and in 1962 he produced works inspired by his memories and sufferings after the death of his wife. There are two distinct parts in Bissière's career, which started in earnest in 1919 after his meeting with Favory, Lhote and Braque who made him discover Cubism, a form of art that influenced him much during many years.
Bissière had much influence over many French painters who started to be known after the Second World War as he was one of the great theoreticians of Cubism who tried to apply new experimentations in the juxtaposition of colours in his works with a view to master harmony and rhythm. The War made him learn to forget futile things and to go for those that were essential. «Perhaps I was led to a kind of introspection,» he said after he resumed work in 1944. The second part of his career started after the war when reality seem to disintegrate in his works exhaling sheer freedom that formed a new language, suggesting forms in his tapestries such as that of an angel, a bird, a faun or a star.
After an eye operation, Bissière gave up any clue to figuration in the paintings he exhibited at the Jeanne Bucher gallery in 1951 to which he gave the provocative title of «Images without titles».
Afterward Bissière gave titles to his works with psychological meanings such as «The Agony of the Leaves» or «Nobility of Ruins» and tackled new possibilities in the field of abstraction but always with great freedom that enabled him to stay away from the abstract academic path that many other artists had followed.
Bissière loved to quoted the Douanier Rousseau who once said: «It's not me who is painting, it's something at the tip of my fingers»…
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