Dominique
ANDRE was born Decems, his only lung left suffering from tuberculosis.
Nevertheless he managed to start developping his skill as painter,
with the support of his father in law, Pierre DUBREUIL, and the elder
Marcel GROMMAIRE and Jean LURCAT.
At
the time to the Liberation of France, Dominique's father, mother,
and elder brother lived in a tinber 14th 1943 in Aubusson. One year
later, he and his parent narrowly escaped from an air-raid: one can
imagine the typical war image of a parm jolting throught the flaming
night, carrying the salvaged baby...and the radio-set of the family.
Maurice,
Dominique's father, was slowly recovering from the war's sequel
y
two room flat on boulevard Exelmans in Paris. The children were busy
playing outside gathering in car wrecks left behind in west grounds,
Throwing stones at bird or launching expedition on the barges of the
nearby Seine, whose banks swimmer and bathers used as beaches, turning
former air shelters into changing rooms.
By
the time Dominique ANDRE was five, his eyes were busy storing pictures,
among then those of his father's studio at Villa Brune, were the family
move to join the painter and sculptors who had setteld there before
the war : DUFRESNE, ZINGG, LAURENS, CALDER, BUXIN, and of course Grandfather
DUBREUIL and his next door neighbour Fernand PINAL, a retired tax
inspector and fine amateur painter.
All
this artist's families shared the best and worst moments of life.
The children climbed trees in the vegetable garden next to the battered
studios, with their joint toilet. In 1955 "Godin stoves and bathtubs
coexisted pleasantly wheter in kitchens or main-rooms.
From
the three children's bedroom one overlooked the partly disaffected
alway nearby, buried under accacia and wide weeds. Twice a week a
steam train past alone, loaded with the small popular Renaud cars
it hauled away for future holiday makers. Every quater of an hour
the bell of the church Notre Dame de Bon Secours chimed time away.
The
Villa brune had been an annex of Montparnasse in the Twenties and
Thirties. It was still frequented by numerous artist who can to visit
VALSUNI, the metal caster. PICASSO sometimes paid his respect to Elvira
DUBREUIL, Dominique's grandmother, who had sat for RODIN, MODIGLIANI,
and PASCIN : this very PASCIN whose wife and former mistress, Hermine
DAVID and Lucie KROHG, for ever united in the loving memory of there
"belove departed", called to pay visit to there old friends
Elvire and PierreDUBREUIL.
Through
the fifties and the sixties Maurice ANDRE decame one of the most celebrated
tapestry-cartoon painter of the time. The Villa Brune was visited
by film makers and renowned artists. It was the time when the reviver
of the art of tapestry acquiered a convertable fatefully named "
la licorne ".
The
family set of to visit Friends living in quainte troglodite dwelling
in the fontainebleau woods and eventually drove as far of the gorge
of the Tarn. Dominique grow up enjoying precious or strong moments,
happy or paintful, more intensely than most quieter.
At
the age of ten he would offer or sell his colored drawings to whoever
wanted them as well as the pigeons he shoot in then garden : the breton
concierge was his best customer for both. On sunday the family enjoyed
Grandmother's DUBREUIL apple pie surrounded by the painting of Pierre
and PASCIN on the walls. In the studio one helped printing engravings
by giving a hand turnig the enormous press.
By
the time he was fifteen Dominique studied at the Academie Charpentier
in Montparnasse to apply for admission at the Ecole Nationale des
Arts Decoratifs. Once there, he had LABISSE, PICARD-LE-DOUX, GROMMAIRE
for teachers. All the same time he became very involved in the theatrical
and musical activities of the school. Her toured, played in brass
bands and at dances, he was everywhere even on the stage of the Théâtre
with PLANCHON...The walls of his first studio high up in a low-cost
and housing rue de la Convention bore testimony of his pranks : canvasses
with vividly colored figures, full of light and energy foretelling
the explosion of 1968. Along with the graphic violence went the verbal
difficult one of difficult relationship with his first wife, a Spanish
actress. At that time he exbitred at the salon de Mai,was awarded
the Prix du Dôme,the Prix de la Jeune Peinture,etc...Meanwhile,
he relaxex by growing tomatoes between the chimneys on the roof of
his block of flats...
Soon
Dominique ANDRE settled down in a small studio on the avenue Junot
in Montmartre: from there his dreams of wide space would emerge,memories
that he kept of the films forwhich he had created scenaries ... blues
of Tahiti where he rebuilt GAUGUIN 'cabin for a television series
on the artist'life
yellow
ones of the Sahara after anothe series on the epic of the Aeropostale.
Fond
of music,Dominique enjoys playing it,not professionnaly
like
his pianist brother, but like an old self-taught jazzman,with the
guitar he learned to play from the Gitans the year he spent working
in the Camargue.
He
has also "made" music ,while learning how to use tape recorders,to
mix and mound sounds, to make recordings of the parisian bush music,the
big -tone jungle noises.He shares his time between synthetizer and
easel, music and painting.
Thus,
in the seventies, improvised for Radio France Masic, and had and exihbition
for Olivetti on the Faubourg St Honore.He also returned to movie-making,
and created film sets for works by Claude Sautet, Roger Pigaud, Pierre
Granier -Deferre , Samuel Fuller, Christopher Frank, Sergio Leone,
Andjev Zulawsky, Geoges Lautner, Philippe de Brocca, Marcel Julian,
Christian Jacques, Jean Louis Lecomte, Francis Veber, Edouard Molinaro.
He
exibits little, yet canvasses pile up, ideas bursting forth through
the paint brush, loading his looks, shoving reckoning and hesitations.Life'
s and fiction' s movie-making mix up colors and vivid shadows, urge
Dominique Andre into a free,swift and powerfull painting style, into
challenging light with secure for balance mixed with intensity in
gesture that stops to draw outline and extreme borders of attention:
excitement but at the same time silent and softness.
The
work of Dominique ANDRE, heir to his forefathers, drawn forth in his
youth and matured by sound training, disclosed a personality whose
talent shine out with a rare evidence and keeps developing in a powerful
and original stream, away from present time fashions and trends.
Dominique
ANDRE presently lives and works near Paris, in a large house he has
partly built himself in the midst of cornfields and little country
side by -roads.
Galerie
Saint Germain des pres Paris.
