Claude Venard

Claude Venard was an internationally renowned, French post-Cubist artist whose thickly textured, boldly colored paintings brought him a significant international following during his lifetime and beyond. 

Born in Burgogne, Venard studied at the École des Arts Appliqués, before financial pressures forced him to leave and take work as a restorer at the Louvre – a role that he recognized as enabling him to hone key aspects of his craft.

He began exhibiting with the Force Nouvelles group, aligning himself with the other artists involved at a time when the movement was heavily influencing the Parisian post-war art scene. He was a regular exhibitor at the École de Paris exhibitions, helping to set up the Salon de Mai, which championed the city’s avant-garde abstract artists. 

Venard’s work sits somewhere between abstraction and naturalism, with familiar components of figures or objects juxtaposed in a work, albeit often given a fragmented or abstracted treatment, complete with geometric outlines that hint at a hallmark, if partially hidden, underlying structure. His impastoed paintings are instantly recognizable for their heavily textured layers, while his use of color moves through the spectrum to reflect varying degrees of emotional intensity.

Venard’s popularity and successes brought him international acclaim. His work continues to be shown widely in the US, Asia and Europe, with retrospectives among many exhibitions held, and remains highly sought after by collectors today. He died in France in 1999.