French Abstract artist Georges Bernède was born in Monségur, France in 1926. It was here that, in around 1940 on a small country road, Bernède saw established artist Mildred Bendall painting en plein-air. The encounter would leave a lasting impression on the young Bernède, who was already an aspiring artist. The German military occupation of France during the Second World War had forced many artists like Bendall to flee homes which were located within the Occupied Zone. Bernède’s hometown of Monségur was situated in the so-called 'Zone Libre' (Free Zone), where life had been able to continue relatively uninterrupted. Being near her hometown of Bordeaux, Bendall had relocated there at the onset of the War. Under her influence, Bernède started painting professionally in 1942 and began as a figurative expressionist. Drawing on Bendall’s training with Henri Matisse, he employed strong colour as building blocks, abandoning using black tracing for shadows. These canvases were exhibited at the yearly exhibitions of the ‘Artistes Indépendants de Bordeaux’, the Group ‘Sève’ and the Group ‘Le Regard’ during the 1940s and 1950s.
Though the Second World War brought many changes in its wake, the profoundly conservative artistic communities of Bordeaux would not warm to Abstraction until the late 1950s, decades after it had become a recognised movement in Paris. Bernède would continuously push the boundaries of the accepted, remarking: “My style was innovative, and therefore, unsettling.” The post-war years heralded exciting and innovative styles of Abstraction on both sides of the Atlantic. New York’s Abstract Expressionism and Action Painting echoed in its European counterpart known as ‘Art Informel’, with its sub-variants of Lyrical Abstraction and Tachism. These styles involved paint spontaneously dribbled, splashed, or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work usually emphasised the physical act or ‘geste’ (gesture) of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work. Bernède first turned to Lyrical Abstraction during the early 1960s, producing works of greater spontaneity, with occasional suggested imagery, his colour palette a riot of rich earthy tones and vibrant blues and greens.
Yet, in his continuous search to express the essence of life, to establish an analogy to musical rhythm and to touch the viewer deep in their subconscious, Bernède gradually grew into a purer form of gestural painting. This he partnered with a predominantly black and white palette. Whilst being deceptively subtle, these paintings have a dynamic, instinctive, and dramatic impact and are characterised by Bernède’s intuitive and energetic application of paint. His works are accessible and easily understood, for they evoke the collective sense of an archetypal visual language, seeking to aid a civilisation’s understanding of the world through heightened self-consciousness and awareness (a concept adopted by the Action painters from Freud and Jung.)
Although Bernède’s work bears obvious similarities to that of Franz Kline, he was never an imitator. For with Matisse as a starting point through Bendall’s tutelage, Bernède’s style evolved instinctively through disciplined research and progress, as his artistic development over the years testifies.