Composition - Dated 1952.
 
Oil on canvas signed lower right.
Sketch on the back.
Dimensions: 73 x 60 cm, with frame: 99 x 86 cm.
 
After attending classes at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and at the Académie de la Grande Chaulière in the studio of Othon Friesz, Oscar Gauthier spent a year in the United States.
Upon his return in 1948, he became one of the leaders of Lyrical Abstraction in the immediate post-war period and joined the Colette Allendy gallery, which he left in 1952 to join the group of the painter John-Franklin Koenig in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. This group was championed by Jean-Robert Arnaud who, in association with the painter John-Franklin Koenig, opened a gallery at 34, rue du Four in Paris. For ten years, this place was the crossroads of young avant-garde painting (Lyrical Abstraction, or "Lyrical Landscape Painting", according to Michel Ragon's term.) 
 Oscar Gauthier is an abstract landscaper, preoccupied with light and movement. His work from the 50s, using thick and structured material, is situated in abstract expressionism.  
 Bibliography: R Van gindertael »Oscar Gauthier »-Cazenave Paris 1960.
 
National Museum of Modern Art of Paris