Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Château-Renault, Centre-Val de Loire, France
About André Bauchant
- André Bauchant (April 24, 1873 – August 12, 1958) was a French 'naïve' painter.
- He is known mostly as a painter of flowers and of landscape compositions with figures which were often informed by mythology and classical history. He was born in Château-Renault, Indre-et-Loire.
- The son of a gardener, he originally entered his father's trade, and progressed to operating a nursery.
- In 1914, he was called to serve in World War I.
- During the military service his drawing skills were noticed and he was trained as a mapmaker.
- After demobilization in 1919 he found his nurseries destroyed.
- He and his wife relocated to Auzouer-en-Touraine, where he found work on local farms.
- Inspired by the rural environment, at the age of 45, he dedicated himself to a career as a painter.Many of his early works depict biblical or mythological themes.
- His first exhibit was in 1921 at the Salon d'Automne, where he showed a large Ulysses and the Sirens and eight other paintings.
- Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant wrote an article about him for the journal L'Esprit Nouveau in 1922, and Le Corbusier became an important collector of his work.
- In 1927 Bauchant was commissioned by Diaghilev to design sets for Stravinsky's Apollon Musagète.Subsequently, Bauchant's most frequent subjects were floral still-lifes and landscapes with figures.
- In 1937 his paintings were included in the exhibition Maîtres Populaires de la Réalité, which traveled to Paris, Zurich, and London.
- In 1938–1939, a version of the same exhibition was presented at eight US museums, beginning with the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
- In 1949, a retrospective exhibition of 215 of his works was mounted by the Galerie Charpentier in Paris.According to the art historian Nadine Pouillon, "Bauchant's treatment of figures, frozen in attitudes indicating a certain awkwardness and as if enshrined in foliage, manifest a poetic and mysterious quality sometimes reminiscent of medieval paintings.
- This association was further emphasized by his use of unglazed colours in the manner of quattrocento frescoes and by a colour sense similar to that of Giotto."
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