Bissière, Figures beside

Distancing himself from contemporary circles, and both admired and rejected by his peers, Roger Bissière (1886-1964) painstakingly built up a powerful body of work, imbued with a profound humanity. Bissière's work is at once “decidedly intimate and poetic but also open and oriented towards the universal”. The human form occupies a central place, only to disappear abruptly in favour of a pictorial universe composed of signs and pictograms. With 85 paintings, one sculpture and two tapestries made between 1920 and 1964, the exhibition at the Museum of Lodève explores the place of the human figure in the work of this remarkable artist. “The painting - whether it is an oil, a water-colour, made with fabric, cement or dirt from the street – has but one significance: the character of he who created it and the poetry that resides in him. Everything is permitted, everything is possible, provided that behind the painting a man appears, just as he is – naked, like life itself.” Roger Bissière