Lelia Pissarro, Fourth Generation of an Art Dynasty

Enjoy an unprecedented exhibit of works by Lelia Pissarro, 50, great grand daughter of Camille Pissarro, the father of French Impressionism. On display are mostly works by Lelia, and a few by her father, grandfather, and Camille himself. This includes oils, watercolor and serigraphs.

Lélia Pissarro has painted since the age of 4, having been educated by her grandfather Paulémile Pissarro and her father H. Claude Pissarro. From infancy until the age of eleven she was entrusted to the care of her grand-parents, Paulémile Pissarro and his wife Yvonne, in Clécy, Suisse Normandy, where her interest in drawing and painting was nurtured by her grandfather who taught her the fundamental impressionist and post-impressionist techniques. When she returned to her parents in Paris at the age of 11, the role of teacher was taken over by her father and she subsequently studied at l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Lélia moved to London in 1988 and her work has regularly been exhibited in galleries around the world, and following the tradition of her great-grandfather (Camille Pissarro), grandfather and father, Lélia has played an important role in continuing this artistic dynasty by participating in a series of exhibitions entitled Pissarro – The Four Generations.

Before enrolling in les Beaux-Arts, Lélia was already sure of two
things: she wanted to spend all her life painting and drawing and she
wanted to paint in a figurative style. Lélia wanted to paint what she
was looking at, what she could see and identify with: nature, portraits,
people and villages.

The impressionist technique was what Lélia
had learned from infancy, as she wanted her viewers to recognise places
and people in her paintings. Les Beaux-Arts failed to provide her with
the formation she needed or expected, in order to paint satisfactorily
in the style she had in mind. Although her grandfather and her father
had spent as much time as they could in teaching her, it was never
enough. She always wanted to learn more, more about watercolour,
gouache, pastel, oil and etching, but it seemed she had so much to
learn, she might never reach the end.

For Lélia, the end meant
being able to paint whatever she wanted without having to think, without
having to sweat over it or finding it difficult. She wanted every
subject she turned her hand to, everything she was looking at, to
develop in front of her eyes “comme par enchantement,” as if by magic.
That was her goal, her idea of satisfaction. It eventually came about:
she attained her end. Today Lélia can draw and paint anything she wants
with ease. For many years, she did not shift from her objective,
failing to realize that she had at the same time imprisoned herself in a
world of art economics and art investment. Galleries and agents were
queuing for and fighting over her work.

At that time she thought
it was glorious. Only later on did she realise that it was not her they
were supporting, not her work, simply their own potential portfolio. She
had become merely a commodity, locked within an ever more demanding,
ever more constricting commercial spiral.

Eventually, however,
it became boring, stultifying, unbearably restrictive, a straitjacket -
her artistic expression had shifted from creation to constraint. She
needed more artistic freedom, further artistic challenges.There followed
a lengthy barren period during which Lélia found herself questioning
whether she would ever paint again. Almost by chance, although
perhaps by design, circumstances and events - first a spontaneous sketch
to direct a student, then a response to a request from her son –
combined to encourage Lélia to pick up her brush once more. Thus, the
Circle series was born. and from that day Lélia began painting for
herself.

From 1967 until 2002 she had shut herself inside a
self-constructed prison of having to paint daily, in order to fulfil her
ambition of painting all subjects without mistakes, without difficulty,
meeting her own exacting standards, knowing all the time that she was
hypercritical of her own work. Have things changed today? For her
work, definitely: she now paints what she wants, how she wants, without
any interference, meddling or comments from galleries and dealers, for
those dealers have made commodities of other artists.


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