ROGER BISSIÈRE (French, 1888-1964)

Composition avec Mandoline, c.1925 Oil on canvas 27 x 40 cm Signed lower right Born in Bordeaux, Bissière arrived in Paris in 1909. He enrolled at the Académie des Beaux-Arts and found lodgings with André Lhote. From 1912 onwards Bissière supplemented his income as a painter with writing exhibition reviews and critics first for ‘L’Opinion’ and later for ‘L’Esprit Nouveau’. These writings formed a solid basis for his personal reflections and offered the necessary references for development of his own painting. Encouraged by Lhote and Braque, Bissière adopted a more humanized version of Cubism. As such he enriched orthodox Cubism by applying the fauve technique of heavy brushwork to its usual pictorial vocabulary. Bissière’s unremitting investigations into the survival of Cubism brought him to Neo-Classicism in the 1920s and ultimately pushed him to Abstraction. Bissière exhibited with Léonce Rosenberg, 1921-1923, after which he was under contract with Galerie Druet, 1923-1928. In 1964 he represented France at the Venice Biennale. Bissière’s authority as a teacher at the Académie Ranson, from 1925 until 1938, is traced in a whole generation of abstract artists including Manessier and Viera de Silva. Literature: Nature morte relates to two works published in I. BISSIÈRE and V. DUVAL. Bissière: Catalogue Raisonné 1886-1939. S.l., s.d, no.416 & 419.