Description
Pierre Boffin: * 1907, Aalen † 1992, Voerde
Execution: oil on canvas
Date: around 1970
Dimensions: 29,7 x 40 cm
Signed: bottom right
Provenance: original work from artist’s estate.
Pierre Boffin is considered an important representative of expressive realism and belongs to the group of the “lost generation” because of the ban on work in the 40s of the 20th century. Boffin studied for three years at the Düsseldorf Art School, under Professor Sackenheim. He studied painting, free graphics and stage design. During this time, Boffin devoted more time to his graphic and printmaking talent. In addition, Pierre Boffin took courses in art history with Professor Theissing. It is precisely this diverse and sustained training in painting, the fine arts that is reflected in Boffin’s entire oeuvre. Under National Socialism, Boffin, like many of his colleagues, was unable to work. Later in the war he was imprisoned in a concentration camp and after the war worked as the editor of a prisoner of war magazine. Pierre Boffin had his first exhibition at the Paris “Salon des Indépendants” in 1947, which marked the beginning of an extensive period of work and exhibitions that lasted over four decades. From 1952 to 1970, numerous exhibitions followed in Paris, including at the “Société Nationale des Beaux Arts”, the “Exposition Decouvrir”, the Salon “Artiste Francais” and the Salon “Teeres Latines”. During this period he was represented by galleries such as the “Main” gallery in Monparnasse, or the “Marseilles” gallery in Paris as well as the “Foyer des Artistes” gallery. In London his works are presented together with Heyssial and Georges Delplanque.
In his early work he deals mainly with landscape painting. Capturing a landscape mood and interpreting the tense moment of a place, of a light occupies him again and again in his work. His main focus, however, is on the human image, the interplay of inner impulse and external law. His people, not figures, always find their role, their meaning in a landscape, a group, a subject, up to the confrontation with the interpretative stage-like quality of the human moment. Here Boffin is masterful in quotation, without irony, but rather with great inner curiosity. Boffin puts his performers on the canvas, the stage of his colors. The erotic motifs reveal a lustful gaze that in the next moment connects with a deeper symbolism and broader meaning of sexuality. In the late work there are also radical confrontations with daily political events, which he brings to the canvas seemingly directly, yet again expressively broken.
