| The beautiful fresco work, for the Festival hall of the town hall of Ivry, which the painter Girieud and his collaborators have just completed, participates in these great artistic works which have been honored by other centuries or others country.
Let us take up the problem as it arose at the commission for artistic works designated, as we know, by mutual assistance from the artists, when Mr. Jacquelin, mayor of Ivry, proposed this work to the police station. It was a question of animating a room without brightness, long of 29 meters, high of nine meters, a brave room of these town halls of suburbs built around 1860.
Free surfaces to make lovers of large compositions dream; a few picture windows on one side, a few lost doors on the other, a monumental fireplace too small for this vast space, these were the characteristics of a fairly beautiful room, but whose architectural lines were cut so completely unexpected by two stucco columns, defying any law of aesthetics, useless both by their appearance and by their static role.
A magnificent site was offered; 300 square meters to decorate, including a single 145 m2 panel. Let us give thanks, for once, to the circumstances which forced us to do without such a piece of canvas. Because it is a fresco, a real one, made of sand and lime, as treated with so much science the masters of the antique, that we are happy to contemplate.
It was a magnificent project, reminiscent of the past where the supervisor and students united their talents in the same communion of artistic faith and which, in a few months, made the great workers' city of Ivry, a place intended to mark the return of the mural to works of character.
The fresco is this ideal material, belonging to the wall, becoming one with it, giving the tones a velvety nuance, a real wall painting, recently put back in the spotlight, and we must hope to see our sad bursts of freshness. bare facades.
Among the very interesting models which were presented to the competition, it would be unfair to ignore that of Fouqueray, some pieces of which represented small masterpieces, such as his regatta race on the Seine; that of Quelvée, brimming with spirit and grace; that of Souverbie, magician of colors, each touch of which is a piece of the sun; that of Narbonne, fiery, vibrant with gaiety.
Girieud's composition, very orderly, in a calm and pleasant color, was ultimately to win the vote in favor of an artist who is particularly familiar with the fresco process for having studied and practiced it in Italy and Egypt. Also he was able to carry out his work as a true conductor, directing a team of fifteen collaborators, setting the tone, correcting the false notes, taking the measure of a brilliant symphony whose clear chords will touch the hearts of generations of workers, come there to penetrate with a pacifying grandeur signified by the allegories borrowed from Nature, the Arts, the Games and the family.
Reoroduction of the Joys of the family - of the joys of the River - of the gardens |