André Brasilier
B. 1929 | French

Le miroir Vénitien

Signed "André Brasilier" (lower right)
Oil and pencil on canvas

Quiet and contemplative, French artist André Brasilier's Le miroir Vénitien exemplifies the artist's thoughtful point of view and graceful, sensitive aesthetic. The composition features the minimalist countenance of a young woman reflected in an oval-shaped mirror mounted just beside a large window. The window frames a beautiful vista of the abstracted center of Venice, identifiable by Brasilier's spare yet decisive rendering of the dome of St. Marks. Deceptively simple, Brasilier's composition combines multiple perspectives in a flattened plane, collapsing various spatial distances into a single canvas.

Brasilier’s works offer a deeply personal glimpse into his interior world. Dreamlike and peaceful, his colorful meditations on life and the natural world often depict horses and iterations of the female form, with Brasilier's wife and muse Chatal frequently inspiring his compositions. Many of Brasilier's harmonious works also recall the Japanese prints that revolutionized 20th century art. Portraying the delicate countenance of a woman as she gazes back at her reflection, Le miroir Vénitien links Brasilier's signature introspection with his favored subject matter. The work's unique flatness and rendering of space demonstrates the influence Japanese prints in Brasilier's body of work.

André Brasilier is regarded as one of the last surviving modernists of the École des Beaux-Arts. Born in 1929 to a family of artists in Saumur, France, Brasilier's artistic talent and appreciation for nature blossomed early, and he went on to study at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1952, he was awarded the Prix Blumenthal and the following year, at the age of 23, Brasilier won the prestigious Premier Grand Prix de Rome for painting. Basilier is one of only two artists, the other being Pablo Picasso, honored with a retrospective at Saint Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum during their lifetime. He has exhibited works alongside Picasso, Braque, Chagall and Miro, and he is represented in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). In August of 2022, Sotheby’s Hong Kong held a monumental retrospective exhibition featuring compositions from every chapter of Brasilier’s momentous career.

Painted 1981.