Gabriel Robin

In November and December 2008, his adopted hometown of Aulnay honored him with a retrospective at the Espace Gainville and showed a selection of his works in the exhibition entitled Lights, Colors, Shapes: Creation in France during the Years 1940 – 1950 at the l'Hôtel of Ville of Aulnay-sous-Bois.

The artist went back to his cobbler shop in Aulnay-sous-Bois. He continued painting, away from the art market, until his death in 1970.

From 1962 until 1969, Robin let color, light and form explode in a series of canvases dedicated to volcanoes (Etna, Niragongo).

Until 1950, Robin exhibited his works many times in Paris in places such as the Salon d’automne, and at the exhibition on French Contemporary Art (in 1946) at the Musée du Luxembourg. He also presented his works in Lyon (Galerie Folklore of Marcel Michaud in 1945), in Saint-Étienne (an exhibition entitled Young Masters of the School of Paris in 1946 at the Musée de Saint-Etienne), in Nantes (Galerie Michel Columb in 1946 and 1948, and at the Galerie Mignon – Massart in 1950) and finally in Lille (Galerie Evrard in 1950).

Beginning 1948, Robin turned to new stylistic research. His painting evolved towards movement and color. Now, violent tones in dancing flames and superimposed layers of dominate his work which has shifted towards a powerful lyric abstraction. His Terres chaudes and Terres froides (Warm lands and Cold lands, 1949 – 1961) are abstract landscapes which evoke terrible fires in the forest, storms and shipwrecks in oceans full of despair. The colors vibrate, move and inevitably material has to be used : he incorporates sand in his compositions.

In 1945, René Drouin, who had just founded his gallery Place Vendôme, signed a contract with him as well as with Fougeron Gischia, Singier, Manessier and Le Moal.

He will also exhibit in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in 1945 at French Painters Today exhibition and in Tokyo et Osaka ein 1962, during the International Exhibition of French Painting.

In February 1943, he participated in the exhibition Douze peintres d’aujourd’hui (Twelve Painters of Today) organized by the art critic Gaston Diehl (who founded the Salon de Mai that same year) t the Galerie de France. It also included the painters Bazaine, Borès, Estève, Fougeron, Gischia, Lapicque, Le Moal, Manessier, Pignon, Robin, Singier and Jacques Villon.

It is thanks to André Lhote and Jacques Villon, with whom he had a long time friendship that Robin rose to great successes. André Lhote and his wife, Simone Camin, were very interested by Robin's colorful research built upon the work of Georges de La Tour, nd they organized his first solo exhibition at the gallery Pittoresque in 1943.

Rosenberg showed these paintings to Braque and Picasso and Braque advised him to keep an eye on the artist. He went back to Aulnay several times and bought a dozen canvases. The declaration of war interrupted these transactions as Paul Rosenberg left for the United States in 1940 in order to escape the Nazis and later opened a gallery in New York.

Paul Rosenberg was the first art dealer to take notice of Robin. He went to visit him in Aulnay-sous-Bois in 1938 and immediately bought two large canvases Robin had just finished.

In 1932, as one of the founding members of the group called the Indélicats, he participated to its activities. They published an anarchist magazine, in the form of booklets containing ten linocuts (engravings on linoleum) printed at about a hundred copies, which took a political and critical look on society. Some of the social issues dealt with by Estève, Pignon, Roger Falck, Georges Ort, Adrien Cumora, Gisèle Delsine, Louis Féron, Fougeron, Marcel Debarbieux and Gabriel Robin with very effective graphic force were Bastille Day (14 July), unemployment, the elite, athletes, colonization and war.

After practicing various crafts in factories and on construction sites, Gabriel Robin, who attended five years of evening drawing classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Belleville, set up his studio above the house he built in Aulnay in 1931 in which he shared his time between his profession as a cobbler in the morning, and his passion for painting the rest of the day.

Gabriel Robin (1902 in Nantes – 1970 in Aulnay-sous-Bois) was a French painter of the new École de Paris.