Genevieve Asse, named at birth Geneviève Bodin, was born on January 24, 1923, in Vannes, France.
Asse and her twin brother was raised by her grandmother on the Rhuys peninsula in Brittany. It was there where Asse became fascinated with the beauty of the sky and sea.
Her parents divorced and she never met her father. In 1932, Genevieve moved with her mother, who worked at the Delalain publishing, to Paris. There, Asse’s mother married the doctor Étienne Le Sourd.
Genevieve Asse studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs which she had entered in 1940.
Genevieve Asse’s career started in the 1940s when she worked at the Montparnasse ateliers and demonstrated her paintings at the Salon des moins de trente ans and at the Autumn Salon exhibition.
During the Second World War, the artist joined the National Union of French Students and a French Resistance group called French Forces of the Interior. She also worked as an ambulance driver at the 1st Armored division of the African army. At the end of the War, Genevieve took part in the repatriation of French Jews from the Terezin camp.
After the War, Asse came back to Paris where she designed the tissues for the textile companies Bianchini-Ferrier and Flachard et Paquin.
The first personal exhibition of the artist took place in 1954 at the Michel Warren Gallery in Paris. One of Asse’s paintings, Window, was bought by the Ministry of Arts and Letters. In 1968, she had a retrospective in Reims. Since then, Genevieve Asse was exhibited at different cities around the world such as Marseille, Grenoble, Quimper, Milan, Oslo, Bergamo, Caracas and others.
Ten years later after her retrospective in Reims, Asse began her collaboration with one of the most powerful porcelain manufactories in Europe, Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, for which she created the design for a vase and two sets of decoration for porcelain plates.
In 1987, the artist settled down on Île-aux-Moines where she bought a house. The artist continued her painting and engraving activity. Ten years later, Genevieve Asse contributed to the construction of the stained-glass window for the Saint-Dié Cathedral along with Jean Bazaine, Gérald Collot, Elvire Jan, Lucien Lautrec, Jean Le Moal et Alfred Manessier. Despite this project, she also created some other maquettes of the stained-glass windows and continued her collaboration with national French manufacturers in Beauvais and Sèvres.
Now, Genevieve Asse is living in Île-aux-Moines.
Genevieve Asse is a talented and prolific French artist whose brilliant paintings in blue are recognized all over the world. So, her creations were acquired at the Municipal Fund of Contemporary Art of Paris in 2000.
In 2013, the artist was honoured by the Pompidou Center in Paris. The same year, the Cohue museum in her native Vannes dedicated the whole storey for Asse's artworks which the artist had donated to the museum.
Genevieve Asse’s active social position was marked by the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre.
Quotations:
"It's like drinking, sleeping or eating. When I'm not painting, I'm not calm, I'm not happy."
"I was never really engaged in politics. I’m against antisemitism and any form of racism."
According to the art historian Germain Viatte who wrote the monography on the artist in 1995, Genevieve Asse is a strong, determined woman, a real Breton menhir.
Quotes from others about the person
"She is persistent, frank and hard-driving, but also faithful in friendship and attentive to others." Miriam Dacosta, colleague
