Jean Bertholle, *Books and Sphere*, 1982

Jean Bertholle (1909–1996)
Books and Sphere, 1982
Ink on paper
Signed and dated lower right
37 x 28 cm
JEAN BERTHOLLE (1910–1960)
Born in Dijon in 1909, Jean Bertholle began painting in 1924 and enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Étienne in 1928. The Manet exhibition at the Orangerie in 1932 left him stunned. He attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and produced a few “imitative and academic” paintings, which he later destroyed. In 1933, he continued his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in Paul Albert Laurens’s studio, where he met Roger Bissière, Jean Le Moal, and Alfred Manessier. He helped found the Témoignage group, which brought together painters, sculptors, writers, and musicians. During this period, Bertholle was fascinated by Symbolism, Bruegel’s irony, and Bosch’s strangeness.
In 1941, his painting took a new direction. Drawing inspiration from the work of the Primitives, Bertholle returned to a “highly meticulous figurative style.” He participated in the exhibition *Twenty Young Painters of the French Tradition*, the first avant-garde art exhibition held during the Occupation. Forced by financial necessity to become artistic director of the Gien pottery factory in 1943, he suffered from no longer being able to devote himself sufficiently to painting. However, in 1944 he participated in a group exhibition at the Galerie de France alongside Bissière, Le Moal, Manessier, Singier, and Étienne-Martin, as well as in the first Salon de Mai, of which he was a founding member. In the 1950s, Bertholle exhibited at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher and then secured a contract with Roque in 1957, allowing him to leave his position at the Gien pottery factory and devote himself entirely to painting. He gradually moved toward non-figurative painting, seeking to “erase references and move away from the object to get to the essence.”
Bertholle was selected in 1949 and 1960 for the Venice Biennale, as well as for the São Paulo Biennial, and participated in the 1959 exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. The first retrospective exhibitions of his work were held in 1964 in Metz, Luxembourg, and Caen. From 1965 to 1980, Bertholle taught as head of the mural art studio at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Further retrospectives took place in 1972 in Dijon, followed by exhibitions in Besançon and Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
In the late 1960s, while Bertholle was recognized alongside his peers as one of the leading artists of the New School of Paris, he was among the first to abandon the non-figurative approach. “Non-figurative forms no longer satisfied me. One day, the process began: the figurative broke through the surface once again,” he would say.

After another retrospective at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he was elected a member of the Institut de France in 1983. There he delivered a notable acceptance speech, in which he expressed his lack of understanding of conceptual art, which often boils down to simple installations, before which “an audience of snobs pretends to be in awe.” Passionate about teaching, he founded his own painting academy that same year. After his death in 1996, a first retrospective was presented in La Ciotat in 1997, followed by a second in Dijon in 2011.
His works are held in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Sacred Art in Dijon, the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Fine Arts in Caen, the Greuze Museum in Tournus, and the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar.

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