Alfred Manessier was a non-figurative French painter, stained glass artist, and tapestry designer.
Background
Manessier was born among fishers and masons in the Picardy province of Northern France. His parents were Nestor and Blanche (nee Tellier) Manessier. There was a family precedent for creative work, as the grandfather was a decorative stonemason while his father and uncle had studied at Ecole des Beaux Arts at Abbeville. The father gave the young man permission to go to Paris on condition that he studied architecture, which was a safer occupation than that of painter. It was not until his father, then a wholesale wine merchant in Amiens, suddenly died that he was able to change over to his preferred art studies.
Education
For Alfred's formal education, Alfred Manessier studied architecture, first in Amiens and then as an architecture student at the École des beaux-arts, Paris, in 1929. Manessier disliked the school’s formal atmosphere and preferred to copy paintings at the Louvre — particularly those by old masters such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, and Tintoretto — and frequent the ateliers of Montparnasse. He also briefly studied in 1935 at the Académie Ranson under Roger Bissière, who introduced Manessier to fresco technique, and leading up to World War II, his paintings began to reflect both Cubist and Surrealist influences.
In 1937 at the Paris International Exposition, the French government appointed Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay to represent avant-garde art in Paris transportation centers such as Air Palace and Railways Palace. The couple was given the task to employ and reside with 50 unemployed artists for March and April to create a substantial project of 1,800 m2 of artwork. Among the artists were Bissiere, Jean Bertholle, and Manessier, who worked on four murals.
In 1939 Manessier was called into military conscription, as a technical draftsman. In 1940, expecting the birth of his son, he found work as a farmhand to support the growing family but by 1941 he returned to Paris to exhibit in the Gallery Braun show "20 Young Painters" that ushered into France the non-figurative movement. Despite the abstract style centered in what the occupying Germans deemed "degenerate" modes, and despite Manessier's teaching at the anti-authority and anti-indoctrination organization Young France, the painter was not censored or molested. The Young France organization prepared youth for work at the end of the German Occupation, with a teaching staff that also included Jean Bazaine, Jean Vilar, Jean Desailly, and Andre Clement.
Manessier left teaching in 1943 for painting full-time. During this year he made a 3-day visit to the Trappist monastery in Orne. Demoralized by the Occupation and war, at the monastery he was deeply moved by the ancient garb and art, chants and worship, rhythms of work and silence by the monks. Thus began the fertile period of abstract painting: "mosaic-like patterns, luminous colors often supported by a heavy black grid."
Between paintings, he soon began to explore other mediums for expression. In 1945 his daughter was born, and the 34-year-old Manessier was commissioned to produce costumes and sets for Marie-Anne Victoire production at Studio des Champs-Élysées. In 1947 he was commissioned to produce two stained glass windows for a Breseux church In 1949 he produced a tapestry for the Dominicans of Saulchoir, Seine-et-Oise. These other mediums were ongoing supplements to his painting, throughout his career (selected theatre work includes a 1960 Nervi Italy mounting of the Decameron involving 340 costumes and 18 sets, costumes for a 1963 production of Galileo Galilei at Theatre National Populaire, Paris; selected stained glass work includes 1952 project at All Saints Church in Basel, 1957 project at Chapel of Ste Therese in Nord, 1959 at Munsterkirche in Essen, 1964 at St Gereau in Cologne, and 1968 for Paris' Convent of the Soeurs de l'Assomption; selected tapestry work includes 1952 commission for State of France, 1957 benediction cape for a Nord church, and a 1969 commission for the National Arts Center in Ottawa).
This latter project in Canada triggered for Manessier another spiritual awakening. When visiting Canada in 1967 to view the projected Arts building site and to assess the Ottawa light, he was inspired during discussions of Canada's large areas of undeveloped land and Inuit art and life relatively untouched by Western culture. He was the victim of a car accident in Loiret on July 28, 1993, and died four days later at the Source hospital in Orléans. His funeral was held at the church of Saint-Sépulcre d'Abbeville and he was buried in the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen at his birthplace.
Achievements
Alfred Manessier was an important member of the Paris School and the Salon de Mai, and was best known for his stained glass, tapestries, and paintings, and experiments with non-Figurative Art.
L'offrande de la Terre ou Hommage à Teilhard de Chardin
-12°
Composition
Illustration from 'Elegie pour Martin Luther King'
Terre assoiffée I
La Mise au tombeau
Salve Regina
Early Spring
La Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ
Les Jardin des oliviers
Angelus domini nuntiavit mariæ
L'Emprisonnement
Blue-Green Lines on Aqua Background
Twilight
Untitled
Couronne d'épines
Les Dieux marins
Offrande de la terre I
Plate from Les Cantiques Spirituels
Eaux vives
Pour la mère d'un condamné à mort
Le Crucifiement
Le Sang et l’eau
Untitled
Plate from Les Cantiques Spirituels
Recueillement nocturne II
Abstract Composition
Fishes’ Sanctuary
Hiver
Fête en Zeeland
Les Pélerins d'Emmaus
Tumulte
Religion
In 1943, Manessier experienced a religious awakening during a three-day retreat to a Trappist monastery. Soon after he converted to Roman Catholicism and began to pursue an increasingly ascetic lifestyle.
Politics
At the moment when Communist painters, including those promoted by Jean-Paul Sartre after his turn to the Party in 1952, were embroiled in the crisis of de-Stalinisation, Manessier responded to Suez and the invasion of Hungary with a series of Requiems.
Views
In the postwar period, Manessier was associated with Lyrical Abstraction (Abstraction lyrique) and Art Informel. However, his work also adhered to a more specific strand of French art that appeared during the German occupation and incorporated Christian themes and symbolism into semiabstract compositions.
Quotations:
“It's the passages between things which interest me. Something circulates amongst all forms of human experience ensuring a profound unity.”
Membership
He frequented the Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists.
Interests
Artists
El Greco and Francisco de Goya
Connections
In 1938 Alfred Manessier married painter Therese Simonnet. In 1945 his daughter was born.
