Robert MERCIER-GALLAY

Les œuvres de Robert MERCIER-GALLAY

• Paris.jpg Robert MERCIER-GALLAY https://www.i-cac.fr/upload/medias/mercier-gallay-robert/27f38308cba70400f248da49e6031c896b99d529.jpg PARIS Huile surt toile:  Format 120F  ( 198 cm  x 135 cm) Disponible: En exposition permanente au centre MALRAUX de Chambéry (Savoie) depuis 2020. Prix : 18 500 € PARIS Paris is the first work of the theme: the city. I brought my choice of the first canvas of this theme to Paris for personal reasons. I lived in this city for three years and during my many wanderings, I took architectural, sculptural, monumental or decorative elements that correspond to my creative values. It is a demanding treasure hunt at the same time historical, political and architectural so that we read the clues and the places which carry them. The very complex arrangement of these indices requires stations, stops so that the spectator takes the time to look, to distinguish the known, the unknown which often escapes the eye although it is often next to the first. We must discern its contours, its limits, play with lines and perspectives. I superimpose the plans, the volumes, the transparencies. A new reading is required to apprehend this canvas which can be viewed from left to right, from top to bottom or in many other ways, each spectator will do it in his own way. I suggest, at the top in the left corner of the painting, the silhouette of the Opéra Bastille which runs to the right and down intermittently to which I juxtapose at the bottom of the statue of the Republic which proudly carries one of the mottos of our country “FREEDOM .... to a gargoyle of ND, perched on the pole of the coat of arms of the City of Paris, supported by the column of the Republic adorned with a chimera mask from the Pont Neuf. In perfect symmetry, in the right angle of the painting our gaze is attracted by a signage characteristic of Paris that of the Metropolitan by Hector Guimard in the Art Nouveau style from the 1900s. I thus associate details with historic buildings, drawings of rectilinear lines with ample curves. I chose the great Arch of the Eiffel Tower as the bridgehead that spans all these stone figures, with all the flexibility and lightness of its innovative metal structure: it inaugurates a new technology, signing the entrance to the Universal Exhibition of 1889, one hundred years after the French Revolution. Built to be ephemeral, it remains the emblem of the city of Paris, 210 years later. It houses the bas-relief of the Départ des Volontaires, a work by Rude from 1792 at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe. I bring into resonance the massive bronze statuary with the diaphanous suggestions of the glass roof of the Grand Palais and its metallic structure traced in blood red, through which appear sections of the facade of the Town Hall colored in sky blue in the background. Just in front, below, stands majestically the verdigris equestrian statue of Etienne Marcel, First Provost of Merchants who symbolized the revolt of the bourgeois against the monarchy in the 14th century. It is erected in front of the Town Hall, on the Quai de Seine side. It overhangs the head of the statue of Marianne with the olive branch (the olive branch symbol of the reconciliation of the provinces with Paris August 10, 1793), standing, gilded bronze allegory of the constituted Republic, perched on top of a monumental set commemorating the founding episodes of The French Republic from 1789 to 1880. Another allegory of this set, at the foot this time, echoes La Liberté au torcheau, combatant, in her ample red dress, her right foot resting on a balustrade which leads us by its gesture in its hope of revolution. The ascent of his torch will join the laurel of Marianne and even higher up the Republic leading the people of the Arc de triomphe. She is dressed in a Marian blue drape more intense than the sky, an arm and a leg bare in action catch the light; it adjoins the golden point of the Obelisk of Luxor which outlines the middle of the picture and its ford. From its perfect verticality, I take you through two stories: the longest, the past history, that of our Mediterranean heritage, of ancient, medieval, classical cultures frozen in eternity and our contemporary history of only two centuries which makes break in the history of art with this questioned continuity. The passage from the left part to the right of the painting is effected by a very sober graphic device: the pyramidal diagram of the internal structure of the Louvre Pyramid with its knots of deformations. The rigidity of the glass of the Pyramid can only be supported by the ability of its structure to deform. It is in this knot that I include the central theme of my painting: that of passers-by, passages, smugglers. This link is deployed in the red line of the structure of the flattened glass roof of the Grand Palais. We see behind, in symmetry with the vault of the glass roof, the Dome of the Sacred Heart, built on a place of worship which dates back to the 5th century when St Denis was martyred. This place of the Butte Montmartre then saw the birth of the Company of Jesus whose abbey was destroyed in 1792. In the right angle of the painting dominates the pendant of the equestrian statue of Etienne Marcel, the equestrian statue of Charlemagne and his Leudes verdigris, placed on an enormous pedestal, located on the forecourt of Notre-Dame. First made in plaster, this statue was cast in bronze for the Universal Exhibition of 1878. It marks a major success for the Parisian foundry Thiébaut. Charlemagne is the Frankish king, wearing the crown of Nüremberg who lets himself be led by Roland carrying his Durandal sword and by his cousin who serves as his guide, a mythical and heroic story that gave birth to France. This massive set is supported in my composition by a niche in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame housing a virgin with her head bowed, hanging vertically to the right of the Columns of Buren in the courtyard of the Royal Palace on the left side of the painting. Our gaze then discovers this geographical characteristic of the place: The Seine where I invite you to descend, on dry feet, by a fictitious footbridge on parallel diagonals: The stone Corniche of the National Assembly highlighted by a metal bar of the structure of the Louvre Pyramid. In the background we discover the curves of the chimneys of the Center Pompidou de Beaubourg which seem to carry the discreet couple of lovers of the Luxembourg Gardens. We descend by this invention to the feet of the Zouave du Pont de l'Alma to join in a reverse movement, in the foreground, 2 groups of female sculptures, one dynamic which walks towards the future, the other rather static that faces us, defying the future of its distant past, the bare breast as will "the femen" centuries later. These four women lead our gaze to land at the bottom of the painting on the far left on the “Art Deco” sign of the preserved Samaritaine, but also on the floor of the Garnier opera on either side of the canvas. as if to perform a choreography.The Garnier opera house built for Emperor Napoleon III, but inaugurated under the Third Republic and which under the Occupation of France during the Second World War, is a strategic location for the Nazis. It allows them to rub shoulders with the French elites and to display an artistic sensibility, but it is also a hotbed of resistance, where communist machinists organize the distribution of anti-Nazi leaflets and the escape of Jewish prisoners. Jacqueline BESLOT DAL-MORO
• Immigration Emigration.png Robert MERCIER-GALLAY https://www.i-cac.fr/upload/medias/mercier-gallay-robert/eef3063935132cea0e7113949148adcddcc84787.png EMIGRATION IMMAGRATION Huile sur toile: 2 x 40 F  ( 2 fois  94 cm x 112 cm). Disponible: Prix : 12 000€ 1er Prix (composition abstraite) Salon International du PUY EN VELAY (2022) 
• 9 november 1989 der fall der Berliner mauer und die wiedereinigung.jpg Robert MERCIER-GALLAY https://www.i-cac.fr/upload/medias/mercier-gallay-robert/d1e3ae1d1cac30a89690e8e16d9f41b3003e68e4.jpg Huile sur toile. Oil on canvas: 2 x 40F ( 2 x 100 cm X 81 cm ), Price, Prix: 12 480 € Deutsche Wiedervereinigung oder der Fall der Berliner Mauer (German reunification or the fall of the Berlin Wall) Diptych made just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a major historical event of the late twentieth century. This year we will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its destruction. The peculiarity of this diptych is its reversibility. There is one before November 9th (1st photo) and one after (2nd Photo and current work). "From the dark night, by the red blood, to the golden light" WöbbelinFormula 1815 of a student corporation in Jena charged with symbolizing a united Germany with these colors. The black designating the night covering Germany during the foreign oppression. (French) red showing the blood of hearts poured to gain freedom. yellow means the color of golden dawn for a free renewal. These colors were adopted on August 11, 1919 by the Weimar Republic to symbolize the hope of unity, democracy, freedom that 40 000 students and their university professors wore during the Hambacher Fest in 1832 for a reunification of Germany. For the realization of this work, I was inspired by a sculpture erected on the place Oscar NIEMEYER in HAVRE. City completely and needlessly destroyed during the Second World War by an Allied bombing.On 3 September 1944, Lieutenant-General John Crocker, commander of the 1st British Army Corps, which had just cordoned off the city, proposes to Colonel Eberhard Wildermuth, commander German garrison of the newly besieged, to surrender, otherwise his troops would undergo a massive bombing. The refusal of Wildermuth is accompanied by a request that the civilian population be evacuated, which Crocker refuses in turn. I chose a two-panel composition with a black frame in the manner of a death announcement, separated into two parts in an identical composition, depicting the balance of our human history in an inverted symmetry to signify this inversion of the course of the German History between partitions and reunifications of its territory. Between dark hours and bright hours. Between mortiferous hegemonic desire and pacifist European desire. The colors of the German flag, which are reminiscent of this Republic hope, are spread across the entire width of the two canvases on a wall of gray gradient, bordered on the outer limits of the painting by a reminder of the columns of the Brandenburg Gate, symbol of the division of the city and the nation, integrated into the Wall separating West Berlin from East Berlin. They are treated in a heavy theatrical drapery that dresses the ancient allegorical characters timeless: the winged Republic, the Prussian soldier, the people. I make here the double account of a mise en abyme of the pictorial gesture in the fascination of the fundamental alternative of any people: - "to live in war or in peace" - "to live in peace or war" ..... Between dark hours and bright hours. Each painting represents a Germany, the FRG and the GDR, In the situation n ° 2 that of November 08, 1989, The Republic is standing, in profile to challenge with all the force of his generous body, projected, the remains of the eagle imperial, of which one sees half of the head and the piercing eye in the right angle, at the top of the painting. Perched on a column of the Brandenburg Gate at the right angle, he embodies the role of ominous bird, amputated of his past glory but still threatening; one end of the Prussian flag of Bismarck's Germany pursues her in the back, a discreet presence just above the head of the soldier wearing the green helmet of the East German army; he is much smaller than she is but armed, he does not look at us. The running Republic leans on the enormous pommel of its sword as if it wanted to crush this armed force of which it would definitely want to happen. She is not far from the picture, worried that she is moving away from the death that occupies the focal point of the painting. A naked soldier on the ground, counterpoint to the conquering soldier, expresses all the exhaustion of this vain war; he thinks of peace in this low and luminous part of the picture; he is dominated on the just superior plane by a Homeric hero whom I suppose he can be Hector naked with his shield turning his back to the Republic and the soldier. He turns back because he knows, since his distant past, that any war is destructive, disastrous, without a winner. For the continuity of the scenery to this fatal story, a large bush of dark green laurel with thick leaves that can only consume the fragrance, red bloody berries, toxic which only the gods of Olympus could feast but not men ! Wars are starving the peoples and girding the foreheads of their laurel wreath heroes. A starving character, dressed as a cabaret singer with top hat and long blue-blue gloves, lowers her head to go unnoticed behind this heavy drape. She took the risk of encountering death across the border: she resisted the warlike madness of Nazi Germany and was considered a traitor to her homeland, "The Blue Angel," Marlene Dietrich who sang for the American Allies. On the left side of this painting, the symmetrical V-shaped structure of the Republic wing works in the reverse direction: still in the same colors of the black, red and yellow German banner in the background, less flamboyant, more The Republic finds in the left corner of the overhanging painting the back of the head of the eagle which fits into the German army's helmet. She has the same voluntary stature where she meets the columns of the Brandenburg Gate, which she would gladly fall to; her left arm falling along her body, nonchalantly retains a heavy crown of laurel which disappears behind the drapery of her wind-blown cloak: she tries to get away as quickly as possible from this darkening death, posted at the entrance. The characters that accompany it are those of the People, symbolizing peace and prosperity through the Work of the Earth. They embody the aspiration to newfound life: a fisherman with his large wooden oar and his lantern occupies the place of the Prussian soldier with a green helmet, with an impressive sword; it bears on the left shoulder the blue ocean banner adorned with the crown of the twelve stars, symbol of the European community; he smiles against a background of heavy ears of ripe wheat; on the other side, the desperate hero of the diptych on the right gives way to a handsome grape-grower who smiles at him to the left: she presents him with heavy bunches of red grapes with a pile of fresh fruits and vegetables at his feet that say the Horn Abundance, the Good Fortune recovered. The defeated Hector's character is replaced by a radiant maternity whose newborn child is pointing his index finger at the European flag, devoid of any idea of ​​aggressive nationalism. Finally, a tired mother, whose head rests on the heavy red drape of the flag, adjoins death. It is a counterpart to "Lili Marlene" fleeing Nazi Germany. All of them rub shoulders with death in an image recomposed in puzzle; at his feet a young child is adorned with the breast of the end of the sinister crown of laurels, perhaps honoring a stillborn child? - The current work shows the resurrection of the German people through two of its symbols, the Imperial Eagle and the Brandenburg Gate. this work as each work represents a point of the whole of my work. It tells a story, our story and materializes the constant research that I make for the realization of each painting. I try to be constantly innovative in my painting with a technique always the same "hyper pointillist" as a signature or as a reminder to our tiny and vulnerable situation in the universe, Jacqueline BESLOT DAL-MORO
• DSC01142.JPG Robert MERCIER-GALLAY https://www.i-cac.fr/upload/medias/mercier-gallay-robert/25cee04a7200f7b99d6b46b940ae92caebe627dc.JPG
• TROUILLE 1.jpg Robert MERCIER-GALLAY https://www.i-cac.fr/upload/medias/mercier-gallay-robert/c7a224a2449c66e9a924c40e667c58c1bdfea6a7.jpg TROUILLES BOVACHES ET CARON: Huile sur toile: 15F  (65cm x 54cm) Prix: 2250 €

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