About the artist:

Roland Bierge is born in 1922 in Le Boucau (Basses-Pyrenees), from a French father and a Spanish mother. In 1936, the young boy abandons his studies to enter the painting business of his father. He follows at the same time evening courses of Applied Arts in the City of Bayonne, where his teacher immediately noticed him. Early on, the young man dreams of becoming a painter. War occurs and he works at a self-taught. He exhibits once or twice with a group of painters from Biarritz (Les Saltimbanques). Deported to Germany, he escapes from German authorities and is hidden in a farm of the Landes until the liberation.

Roland Bierge returns working in the company of his father in 1945, but he has no ambition to succeed him. He goes to Paris in 1946, but his beginnings are difficult. He is hired as a decorator at the French comedy. The young artist works alone and visits museums to quench a real thirst for knowledge. The Van Gogh retrospective at the Museum of the Orangerie of Tuileries in 1947, is a revelation to him and makes, perhaps, a turning point. He exhibits for the first time a painting at the Independents Salon.

Three years later (1950), He presents his paintings at the same Independents Salon, and then is noticed by critics. He obtains a first solo exhibition in Paris (La Boetie Galery) and now participates in groups' exhibitions such as Vendemiaires with Jacques Villon, André Marchand, Antoni Clave and Bernard Buffet. The group exhibitions then follow: Autumn Salon, Salon of Young Painters, Salon Comparisons, Mai Salon (from 1969), etc. In 1953, the state buys one of his painting ("Yellow mug and apple"), then the City of Paris the following year. That same year (1954), he exhibits with the group "Rencontres" with Edouard Pignon, among others. Until his death, Roland Bierge exhibits regularly (in France but also abroad), receiving, over the years, several prizes and honorary awards.

Landscapes, portraits, nudes and still lifes are his favorite subjects. Painter, he also addresses the techniques of pastel, lithography and stained glass (Church of Bouchevilliers in the Eure). If in 50 years, attracted by the work of Jacques Villon and André Lhote, Roland Bierge creates in the post-cubist manner, his style evolves gradually. He goes from drawing to the exaltation of colors in the 60 "The Art of Bierge suggests more than it describes, it is founded at the border of stable forms that are needed and those which vanish in dreams and imagination," Jean-Albert Cartier writes after a New York exhibition.

The artist is now a follower of a kind of union between abstraction and figuration. From 1969, Roland Bierge gradually takes liberties with the drawing and crosses from transition to non-figuration, revealing a bright polychrome palette. The Polychromies marks his last period. It is the art of balance and harmony of colors.

Roland Bierge dies in 1991 in Saint-Antoine (Gers). His work is related to what is usually called the New School of Paris.