PAUL AMBILLE 1930/2010

OIL ON CANVAS LE SEXTUOR DATEE 90 92X65CM

Paul Ambille enrolled early at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied with Jean Dupas and Edouard Goerg. In 1955, he was awarded the Grand Prix de Rome and spent four years at the Villa Médicis. He was appointed official painter to the French Navy in 1993 and elected President of the Taylor Foundation in 1995, a position he held until 2007. Paul AMBILLE was exhibited in prestigious galleries in Paris, Japan, Switzerland, the United States, England and the Netherlands. Some of his works are held in museums in France and abroad, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
His painting expresses itself in a register of vibrant colors, the objects his art apprehends are seen as if through a veil, one might even say they are dreamed of, so fluid and quivering are they, the quintessence of their own poetics...

His style has evolved from a formal, precise linear format to luminous, densely saturated compositions made up of multiple layers of washes resembling blobs that seem to float on the surface of the canvas.

Ambille never draws his figures or forms, and infuses his work with a lyrical quality.


Critical reception

"A painting with a deft, "well-bred" lyricism. Influenced by the monumental art of the fresco, by the lyricism of Legueult, by the expressionism of Goerg and Clavé, Paul Ambille orchestrates his themes (Sport, Birds, Racing, Waterscapes) to stick to the essential, gradually erasing the anecdote. A firm drawing always underpins the action of the colored masses, underlining their movement in a parallel path." - Gerald Schurr.

"Figurative, his painting incorporates some of the audacity of Futurism to express movement. It suggests more than it describes. He likes to paint lively, colorful subjects, which the South of France generously offers him". - Jacques Busse
"Riders, regattas, seascapes, urban architectural structures are transformed by his hand into vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines. He tends to seek simplifying synthesis in suggestive planes. Little by little, his material has become matt, limpid, baptismal. Orchestras, rugby matches, bathers, yachting, women at rest in the garden all suggest escape through metamorphosis, the modesty of tones, the finest nuances of values... The interplay of painted masses, consubstantial with each other, serves to build up the aesthetics of Ambille's entire oeuvre." - Guy Vignoh

Musees de Paris, Rouen, Fontainebleau, Cherbourg, France. Museum of Contemporary Art, Teheran, Iran,
Villa Medicis, Rome, Italy,
Municipal Museum of Kobe, Japan.


Ambille won numerous awards during his lifetime, including the Gold Medal at the Salons d'Art Contemporain Italien et Français in Paris and Rome in 1972 and 1958, and the Grand Prix de l'Institut de France in 1976. His works can be found in major art collections worldwide.

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