Invocation (L'Estampe Moderne I)

Born in a goldsmith's family, Marcel-Lenoir went to Paris in 1889. He attended theSchool of Decorative Arts and Paul Baudoüin frescoes at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts and then discovered the artists From the French and Italian Middle Ages to the Musée de Clunyand then to the Musée du Louvre .Passionate about symbolism , he frequented the poet Paul Fort and the circles Rose-Croix , he discovered at the same time the works of the Swiss Arnold Böcklin , the English Edward Burne-Jonesand Pierre Puvis de Chavannes . He abandons symbolism around 1902-1903 for an inspiration closer to nature: the material of his works becomes more emphatic, the colors more vivid, the perspective is gradually deformed, the color is laid in a flat with an effect of " Vertical stretching of the composition, formal boldings imagined by the Nabis twenty years before.Powerful colorist whose effects of matter evoke the Fauves especially of Central Europe. In the perpetual search for new stylistic solutions, his work is a search for a golden age that has never ceased to cover French painting since the end of the 19TH century. Having achieved notoriety during his lifetime, he is today a figure of these abandoned artists, it is true that his intransigent and even provocative attitude to excess will not favor its diffusion.Practicing material austerity and even sincerity in his personal life with sincerity, he never ceased to ridicule criticism and official institutions 1 . An eccentric figure walking at Montparnasse a silhouette of Christ for an artistic cabaret, he was of an ambition above his strength and haunted by inaccessible grandeur. In 1913, he settled in Bruniquel , renting a barn, and put together a team of six masons to work on his large frescoes. He made 27 frescoes during the year 1916. He changed his technique and the composition of his mortar which will give his work a great softness in tones.