Dufour Bernard

Bernard Dufour was a French artist, born in Paris in 1922 and died in Foissac in 2016. He was a painter, writer and photographer. He trained as an agricultural engineer and initially practiced this profession full time. Only after the Second World War did he start to focus on painting. His early paintings were abstract and powerful, without lapsing into strict geometry. He participated in the Salon de Mai in 1946 and co-founded the Salon d'Octobre in 1952, together with Jean Degottex and Pierre Alechinsky. In 1954 his works attracted the attention of the art dealer and gallery owner Pierre Loeb. He stopped working as an engineer to profile himself full-time as an artist. From 1959 onwards he began to distance himself from abstraction and started having models pose in his studio. He exhibited in New York with Albert Loeb, took part in Documenta 3 in Kassel and moved in the musical circles of Pierre Boulez. In 2008-2010 he was given a room dedicated to his work in the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. (BT)