Gardeners Court Galleries
Gérard Rondeau
Paysages
published at 10/11/2017
A great traveller who never tired of seeking out our planet’s many testimonies to beauty and to suffering, Gérard Rondeau was as much interested in people, whose portraits reached into their depths, as he was in heritage and nature. It is his landscapes that are on display here, black-and-white and often dreamlike reflections of the artist’s passion for the mysteries and vibrations of nature, which he celebrated on all five continents.
Presentation
From the Grand Palais’ National Galleries in Paris to the National Gallery in Jakarta, from the European House of Photography in Paris to the Festival de la Luz in Buenos-Aires, and from the Elysée Museum in Lausanne to the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, Gérard Rondeau held numerous solo exhibitions, producing special series in Istanbul, New York, Sarajevo and Rome.
Gérard Rondeau spent twenty years exploring what went on in museums behind the scenes, chronicled life in Sarajevo during the siege, and created a portrait of contemporary Morocco in a brilliant and timeless dialogue with Delacroix’s paintings and drawings; for fifteen years, he accompanied Médecins du Monde missions to all four corners of the globe.
A great portraitist who worked regularly for “Le Monde” for over twenty years, he produced an extensive collection of portraits of contemporary painters and writers.
He spent many years accompanying the painter Paul Rebeyrolle, trod the First World War’s battlefields with the novelist Yves Gibeau, visited the world’s great stages with the Ysaÿe Quartet, and, along with the writer Bernard Frank, created an inventory of the streets of his life.
Rondeau travelled in a black-and-white world, taking countless roads, playing with words, interplays of shadow and silence, bringing stories to life and recreating worlds in pain.
The author of numerous works, on travel, the scars of war, French and European heritage and the world of contemporary painters, Rondeau was a truly unique artist. His books and exhibitions resemble private journals, are even akin to novels.
Gérard Rondeau was born on 10 April 1953 and died on 13 September 2016.
