Henri LACHIÈZE-REY (1927 – 1974) The grey restaurant

LACHIÈZE-REY (Caluire et Cuire, 1927 – Lyon, 1974)
The grey restaurant
1973
81 x 130
Oil on canvas


Henri Lachièze-Rey's work is entitled Le restaurant gris and gives us a glimpse of customers sitting at a table in a bistro in the City of Lyon. The space is suggested by the arrangement of the tables and chairs, as well as the moldings and architectural elements in the background.
The dominance of shades of grey and pale blue creates a hazy and melancholic atmosphere, reinforcing a sense of softness and intimacy. The smothering of the colours is accentuated by this impression of smoky rooms while a few darker touches, especially in the silhouettes of the figures and the details of the furniture, bring a certain rhythm to the painting.
Everything in the composition reflects the understated hustle and bustle of a working restaurant, where no single person or object dominates the scene. The human figures are deliberately depicted blurred and indistinct.
Brushstrokes are visible, with a thick texture and impasto. This treatment gives the painting an almost tactile aspect and reinforces the character of the work.
In many of these works, Lachièze-Rey seems, in fact, to want to explore modern life and spaces of socialization, by highlighting not individuals, but a collective atmosphere. Throughout his career, Henri Lachièze-Rey never ceased to describe these enclosed places, to lock himself in them as if he found in confinement (the packed lighting, the muted colors and contours, the indistinct faces), the means of being part of a certain history of painting.
His personal preoccupations also burst into his painting. The characters in cafés or billiards tables are thus traversed, in the pale brilliance of their faces, by the threat of their disappearance.
Born on December 26, 1927, in Caluire (Rhône), Henri Lachièze-Rey is the son of the philosopher and Professor Pierre Lachièze-Rey. He studied first at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
He exhibited in Lyon, Cannes and Paris, and became a member of the Salon d'Automne. He also exhibited at the Salon des Peintres Témoins de leur Temps and at the Menton Biennial on several occasions, where he received a prize in 1959. A retrospective of his work was organized in 2003 at the Paul Dini Museum in Villefranche-sur-Saône.
In 1949, he won the Prix de Paris, then in 1954-55, thanks to the prize of the Mediterranean Union of Modern Arts, he stayed at the Villa Zoé in Nice with his friend Georges Adilon. In 1957, he married the ceramist Jeanne Charpe. He then lived in Saint-Tropez, then in Tuscany in 1959.
Back in France, from 1961 to 1974, he settled in Saint-Romain-du-Mont d'Or and worked with Adilon and his Sanzist friends, the painters Cottavoz, Fusaro, and Truphémus. His first solo exhibition took place in 1956 at the town hall of Douvaine. His works were then presented in Paris at the Cartier Gallery and in Lausanne, in 1965, 1970 and 1972 at the Entracte Gallery. Other exhibitions took place in Lyon in the Saint-Georges and Bellecour galleries and also in Annecy, Cannes, Toulouse and in New York, at the Franck Partidge gallery, specialized in French figurative painting of this period.
Alas, this brilliant career was brutally shattered. Henri Lachièze-Rey died accidentally, hit by a car in Lyon, on July 14, 1974. Since then, he has occupied a special position between martyrdom and mystery.