GAVEAU
Bio
Claude Gaveau was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1940. At 15, he already attended the Ecole des Arts Appliqués in Paris, where he learned the disciplines of mural and fresco painting, tapestry design and stained glass making. Then he studied for six years at Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, becoming equally accomplished in oil painting, watercolor, drawing and lithography. During his studies, he won a first prize of the Academy of Antwerp. A scholarship to study Flemish painting took him to Belgium for four months and let to his first one-man show in Brussels in 1965. Other exhibitions of his work followed during the 1960’s and 1970’s in France with the Galerie Vauban in Dijon in 1967, 1968 and 1970; with the Galerie Saint Placide in Paris in 1968; with the Galerie Marc Hudier in Belfort in 1970; and three one-man shows with the Galerie La Belle Gabrielle in Paris in 1972, 1975 and 1978.
Statement
An internationally acclaimed master, Claude Gaveau is celebrated for his nudes and still life compositions. Described by critic André Weber as “symphonic”, Gaveau’s landscapes, seascapes, nudes, couples, still life and floral have harmonies of color, structure, and emotion, which draw the viewer into the artist’s interior vision. Seeming to withdraw from reality, yet not abstract, his unique style has an element of mystery, suggesting rather than defining, with diffused indications of form often set against blocks of intense color.