Gen Paul: 3 interesting facts

Gen Paul (July 2, 1895 – April 30, 1975) was a French painter and engraver.

Born as Eugène Paul in a house in Montmartre on the Rue Lepic painted by Van Gogh, he began drawing and painting as a child. His father died subsequent to he was lonesome ten years out of date and Gen Paul was trained to play a part in decorative furnishings. He served in the French army during World War I and was angry twice, losing one of his legs. During his convalescence, he returned to painting, and at Le Bateau-Lavoir he became links with Juan Gris who helped him a good deal. Although Paul never standard any formal training, he made a bustling from his art for on the order of 60 years. While his early works reflected the influences of his links in Montmartre, Vlaminck, Utrillo and Frank Will, he soon developed committed form of expressionism reflecting influences as varied as Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Goya, Velázquez and El Greco. Between 1925 and 1929, he produced many of his best works. The paintings during this phase are characterized by pastime created by gestural brush strokes, daring compositions, forced perspectives, diagonals, zigzags, juxtaposed areas of taking away and certainty and flat areas of color. Unlike extra expressionists of the times such as Soutine, Rouault and the German expressionists, Gen Paul’s works are full of optimism – fueled by his passion for vigor and daily animatronics and his want to overcome his handicap. Due to the activity and hobby inherent in his paintings, some find Paul to be the first performance painter, a precursor to the abstract expressionists of the 1950s.^{[citation needed]}

Paul died at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris upon 30 April 1975 and was interred in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in Montmartre. A great many of his works remain in private hands but a number of his important pieces can be found at museums in France and in other parts of Europe.

Paul first exhibited at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1920. In 1928, his works were exhibited past those of Pablo Picasso and Chaim Soutine. Paul began the 1930s subsequent to a frightful addiction to alcohol, further complicating his chronic health problems. The paintings of 1930s reflect a more somber environment with exact lines and with intent chosen colors and an emphasis of rhythm on culmination of motion. From the 1940s through his death, Paul reverted to a style of produce an effect painting characterized by many of the elements of his put on an act in the 1920s, but his later bill never once more succeeded in recapturing the innovation, emotion and expressionism of his earlier works.

In 1934, he was ascribed for his contributions to France and was awarded the Legion of Honor. In 1937, he was approved to paint a large fresco for the Pavilion of Wines of France at the Paris International Exposition.

In complement to painting scenes from his native Montmartre, including that of his friends, composer Darius Milhaud, writer Louis Ferdinand Celine, Paul travelled to the United States where he painted jazz and classical musicians, a subject taking into account which he had much interest.