French painter, born in 1898 in the Var, died in 1993.
Life
The son of a naval officer who encouraged his vocation, Alfred Courmes was educated in Monaco. In 1919, in a sanatorium where he was being treated for a lung condition, he met Roger de La Fresnaye, some thirteen years his senior, who taught him his craft in a relationship closer to that of father and son than of master and pupil. From 1925 he sent his canvases to the Salon des indépendants and the Salon d’automne.
In 1927 he settled in Ostend, the home town of his wife, the Belgian Henriette Van de Put. There he discovered the Flemish Primitives, the Expressionism of James Ensor and Constant Permeke, and Surrealism; he also met Félix Labisse. L’Homme blessé (1929) dates from this period. Back in Paris, he lived on rue des Écluses-Saint-Martin, and the Canal Saint-Martin became one of his recurring settings.
In 1936 he received the Prix Paul Guillaume. He painted Le Toucher for the 1937 International Exhibition and produced, on commission, a large fresco, La France heureuse, for the dining room of the French Embassy in Ottawa. In 1991 he painted the official portrait of Jack Lang.
The work
Courmes subverted mythology, religious history and advertising imagery with biting irony; he attacked social, religious and militarist forces, and desire is one of his constant themes. André Breton nicknamed him “the Angel of Bad Taste”; Jean Cassou saw him as an “eccentric, bizarre and grating” figure.
His Saint Sébastien (1934, oil on canvas laid down on hardboard, 164 x 59 cm), shown at the 1935 Salon des indépendants, depicts the saint in sailor’s dress in front of the naval port of Toulon. One panel of an unfinished triptych, it has a companion piece, Saint Roch natif de Montpellier (1936). Critics found it in turn “scandalous”, “splendid” and “anachronistic”. He returned to the theme in 1961 with 45 % (de) B.A. (dit : Saint-Sébastien camembert).
Exhibitions and collections
- “Masculin / Masculin”, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 2013
- “Alfred Courmes. La rétrospective”, Espace Niemeyer, Paris, 29 March to 4 June 2023, then Musée de l’Ardenne, Charleville-Mézières, 7 October 2023 to 7 January 2024
- Collections: Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou (Saint Sébastien, acquired in 1984); Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch, Issoudun (Saint Roch)