Corporate Thinker (Claude Benard) 1962

Description: 181216 Corporate ThinkerBy Claude BenardOil on board196225.5 x 21.5″, 65 x 55 cm with frame22 x 18″, 56 x 46 cm $1450 Corporate Thinker is a vibrantly-colored, medium-sized oil on board painting by French artist Claude Benard (1926 – 2016). The painting depicts a statuesque figure at the edge of a what appears to be a round, orange and yellow table. Behind it is a luminous orange background with a single, circled patch of aquamarine identical to the color of the lone central figure. Corporate Thinker comes in a black and white frame and is signed Claude Benard 1962 at its top right hand corner. The figure—heavily outlined and painted in an abstract, minimal style—props a disproportionately small round head on hand that Benard rendered as a mere wisp at the end of an arm. The figure appears to sit in a contemplative position mildly reminiscent of one of French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s (1840 – 1917) most famous sculptures, The Thinker. Yet, instead of resting his other hand on a bended knee, the figure in the painting casually rests an arm on the surface in front of him, as only his upper body is visible. The squiggly shadows that surround his torso contribute to a bewildering perspective as the figure’s torso appears to emerge directly from the table’s surface. Corporate Thinker is one of Benard’s earliest examples of Surrealism, a movement that was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1903 and further pioneered by Andre Breton in his Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 in France. Surrealist artists were heavily influenced by psychoanalysis and would often focus on unlocking ideas and images from their unconscious minds through automatism or depicting imaginative dream worlds that would free them from the repression of the rational mind. Corporate Thinker’s uncomfortably faceless figure and strange perspective appears to be more an example of the latter than the former. Claude Benard was born in Cholet in 1926 and moved with his family in 1928 to Angouleme, where he lived and practiced until he recently passed away in 2016. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and trained in the studios of Cheyssial and Fougerat. He began to exhibit at the Salon des Artists Francais when he was 21. After some time traveling to expand his artistic horizons, he returned to his hometown where he became a professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Angouleme from 1957 – 1980. In 1979, he organized a Salon of Contemporary Art in Angouleme to bring together artists in the Charente region. His style evolved from figurative in the 1960s to Surrealism into the 1970s onwards. Corporate Thinker originally came from his estate after he passed away in 2016. Handling, packing, shipping or pickup from Berkeley CA 94710 Check my collection at albencol

Price: 1450 USD

Location: Berkeley, California

End Time: 2025-01-21T01:42:34.000Z

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