JULIUS BALTAZAR BORN IN 1949

ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 165X110CM DATED 90
Hervé Lambion, alias Julius Baltazar, was born in Paris on July 13, 1949. He is a painter, engraver and lithographer. His first works on paper date back to childhood. As a teenager, he preferred visiting the galleries of Saint-Germain-des-Prés to studying. It was during this period that he met the Cuban painter Jorge Camacho, who gave him his first box of oil paint. A precocious artist, he exhibited at the age of 16. In 1967, he met Salvador Dali who named him “Julius Baltazar”. The latter introduced him to Fernando Arrabal with whom he founded the Intra-Realist Movement. He stayed with the two artists in Cadaquès in Spain. Julius Baltazar develops a universe recognizable at first glance. His works are a burst, inspiration captured in all that is most instantaneous
In 1972, Julius Baltazar was invited to stay and exhibit for the first time in Toronto. His friend Pierre Dmitrienko introduced him to the publisher Georges Visat who bought him more than a hundred watercolors (the first buyer would be Max Ernst) and who taught him the techniques of intaglio. There he met Alain Piroir who would become his intaglio knife. That same year, Julius Baltazar joined the André Biren gallery. It was the beginning of a deep friendship and close collaboration. He met many painters (André Marfaing, Jean Cortot, Olivier Debré, Antonio Saura, etc.). In 1975, he published his first bibliophile work, edited by Georges Visat.
In 1976, he stayed in the Northern Countries, exhibiting in Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Back in France, he met the art critic Guy Marester who introduced him to the Nice bookseller-publisher and collector Jacques Matarasso. The following year, he married and set up his workshop at the foot of Montmartre where he met Raoul Ubac. He exhibits in Liège. It was at the beginning of the 80s that he met Michel Butor, with whom he began an intense collaboration. He also became friends with Michel Déon. In 1983, he took a new look at his work and decided to destroy a large quantity of his canvases and paintings on paper.
The year 1984 saw his first stays and exhibitions in New York and Toronto. North American universities and institutions acquire his artist books. During a second stay and an exhibition in New York in 1985, his text "A l'infini le sable" appeared, in homage to Pierre Dmitrienko, illustrated with two slate prints by Raoul Ubac, published by Editions Adrien Maeght.
In 1986, André Marfaing brought him into the Committee for Young Contemporary Engraving. The Bibliotheca Wittockiana in Brussels is organizing a first retrospective of his books and artists' manuscripts for him. In 1988, he built a workshop in Corsica, in Monticello, where the majority of his works on paper were produced, then another in Vitry-sur-Seine in 1989. He created calling card projects for France Telecom and Alcatel. illustrated. In 1991, his first drawings on lithographic stone were born, at the Clot et Bramsen workshop in Paris. His exhibitions follow one another.
In 1994, he received the commission for a gigantic work to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the descent of the Champs-Elysées by General de Gaulle, on August 26, 1944. Baltazar then occupied the road from the Arc de Triomphe to the ring -point of the Champs-Elysées.

The artist's works are presented in important public collections in Canada, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan and France. Since his first exhibition in 1965, the works of Julius Baltazar have never ceased to attract galleries and museums around the world. Among numerous exhibitions, we can cite the one organized in 1999 by the Martin-von-Museum in Würzburg, which highlights the artist's large-format works. In 2008, he participated in the “Paris painting” exhibition organized by the French Embassy and the French Institute of Athens at the Théocharakis Foundation. The artist has also illustrated more than three hundred works of poetry which have given rise to major retrospectives. In 2007, the Issy-les-Moulineaux Media Library dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him and exhibited his artist's books, his paintings and engravings, as did the Louis Nucera Library in Nice.

HE SAID
Baltazar, painter of mental landscapes crossed by underwater winds, affirmation and destruction at the same time.
Antonio Saura

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