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Gaston Boyer, the African
After the death of his father (a former French overseas administrator and diplomat), three of his friends, also former French overseas administrators, asked Jean Marc Boyer to organize an exhibition of his work (painter, draughtsman, engraver, caricaturist, architect and ethnologist).
The exhibition took place in 2014 at the Mairie du VIe arrondissement in Paris, then at the library of the École Nationale d'Administration (on the premises of the former colonial school).
At the time of the exhibition, visitors asked Jean Marc if a catalog would be produced... it took him the time of retirement to do it.
Here, at last, is the catalog!
It is co-published by the Académie des sciences d'outre-mer, the Archives nationales d'outre-mer and the AROM association (whose logo was designed by his father).
If you're interested, it's available for subscription before its release in bookshops at the end of the year, and for those of you who are quick on the uptake, it comes with a book-sized print of one of his drawings, made in 1951 in Nioro, Mali (Good in attachment).
Editions HD - 120 pages 20cm x 25,5 cm
Gaston Boyer (1922-2012) was one of those men of passion and insatiable curiosity, a keen ethnographer who, in parallel with a career as an administrator for France overseas and then as a diplomat, chose to embark on an artistic quest. Gifted with multiple talents: painter and draughtsman, but also engraver, ethnographer, architect and caricaturist, he sought to capture the intimacy of the people he came into contact with, and to question the quieter life of forms.
Africa provided him with the opportunity for a long and fruitful encounter. His paintings and drawings offer a diversity of portraits and genre scenes, without ever succumbing to the temptation of exoticism. From the Bambara hunter to the fishmonger, from maternity wards to portraits of tribal chiefs, it's the respect for the subject that imposes itself, the vivid and colorful evocation, often sensual, of the postures that seduce him. The realism of an attitude is often used to isolate a motif for "series", which he then works on by varying techniques, colors and supports.
Gaston Boyer's fascination with the land of Africa does not preclude other quests: those for abstract forms. While the influence of modern painters can be seen in his work, it is also a challenge for him, revealing new compositions in which his attraction to the art of the visual comes to the fore. Large flat tones of color, objects in volume and plan within an ideal space.
But the artist also refers to the obligatory and delicate exercise of nudes and still lifes, as he explores all painting genres. His mastery of form, gradation and color is evident. Sardines with Figs and L'Odalisque are eloquent illustrations.
His talent as a caricaturist, which punctuated his entire career, is a more discreet facet of the artist. The many humorous satires he produced of historical figures testify to the acuity of his view of his contemporaries, but above all they reveal an ease with lively line drawings and a mastery of contrasting values, processes he reused extensively in the expression of the bodies and faces in his countless drawings.
Gaston Boyer's quest for form and his determination to grasp the depth and mystery of the Other make him an artist in his own right, and a humanist whose works evoke both a stimulating and refreshing vision of the world and subtle emotion.
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