Cavaclade Finlandaise

Literature

André Brasilier was born in France in 1929. His parents were painters and he showed artistic interest and talent at a young age. At the age of 20 Brasilier entered the École des Beaux-Arts, and won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome three years later. He began exhibiting in France as well as abroad, holding his first solo exhibition at Galerie Drouet in 1959.

Today, Brasilier is one of the most distinguished French painters. His artistic career spans sixty years and he has exhibited in over one hundred solo exhibitions all over the world in countries including France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, United States, Russia, The Netherlands, Korea and Hong Kong. He has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions, including: a retrospective of one hundred artworks from 1950-1980 at the Château de Chenonceau (1980); at the Musée Picasso-Château Grimaldi in Antibes French Riviera (1988); the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (2005); and at the Museum Haus Ludwig für kunstausstellungen in Germany (2007).

Brasilier’s style, often described as a blend of abstraction, expressionism, and something distinctly his own, is widely recognized. His works often feature themes and motifs such as horses, nature, music, and women. As the French critic Bernard de Montgolfier noted: “One could say that Brasilier has a very personal way of being non-figurative within figuration.” Of his own work, Brasilier said: “I always try to give the quintessence of a subject, to say a great deal with a little, like Japanese artists who focus on asceticism and simplicity.”

Simplistic almost to the point of being abstract, this work is a lovely example of Brasilier’s surreal, dream-like style. The painting’s subject is a cavalcade of horses galloping through tall trees, their sleek black bodies in direct contrast to the falling snow that surrounds them. Touches of beige and salmon peek through the trees, adding warmth and allure to the lyrical snowscape and suggesting the rising or setting of the sun.