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Late 19th early 20th century painting
A framed oil on paper measuring 55X42 cm representing an abstract painting signed lower right by Robert Le Ricolais (1884-1977) dated 1937.
Robert le Ricolais was born in La Roche-sur-Yon in 1884, and died in Paris in 1977. He was neither an architect, engineer or mathematician but an inventor of form, structures and new static calculations.
His university studies in mathematics and physics were interrupted by the First World War from which he returned seriously injured. From 1918 to 1931, he lived in Paris, attending the Grande-Chaumière and Montparnasse academy where he worked as a constructivist painter. In 1931, he moved to Nantes to work as an engineer at the Air Liquide company (1930-1943). During this period, he developed air compressor systems that allowed him to create abstract, surrealist and constructivist paintings using paint projections. We can consider that he is a precursor of the spray paint work often used by artists of the street art movements. He files patents. Inspired by the morphostructural riches of nature, its "corrugated sheets and their applications to light metal constructions", he initiated a reflection, which he carried out throughout his life, on the economy of materials. During the Second World War, Le Ricolais developed the Aplex process, consisting of a three-dimensional framework which made it possible, in a context of shortage of materials, to build large spans without an intermediate support point, usable in particular for hangars and covered markets. , halls. He also focuses his attention on the node, the central element of spatial structures.
Member of various networks (Union of Modern Artists, Espace group) he struggles to be recognized in France. In 1951, he emigrated to the United States, where he created the Architectural Structure chair at the University of Pennsylvania for the School of Fine Arts. Finally, in 1968, he founded the Institute for Research and Applications of Spatial Structures (IRASS) which became the Le Ricolais Institute upon his death in 1977.
