• Biography
Self-educated painter, Bernard VERCRUYCE was born in Rheims, in 1949 - France. Raised by his maternal grandparents, it "is impregnated" by painting as of its youth. Indeed, his/her grandfather starts to paint with the retirement. This grandfather is not other than Camille VAN HYFTE, which exposed with O' Brady, Bauchant, Bombois, Vivin, etc... in the Fifties. The child familiarizes himself with the pots and the odors of painting, the fabrics and the brushes. He wants to imitate this grandfather that he admires by subtilizing (in his knowledge, he believes) a little color to him. What appears a play, a priori, in fact an element is determining for the continuation. It settles then with AUVERS-on-Oise with his parents, and, happy coincidence, is being the neighbor of the house of Doctor Gachet. This doctor who agrees to take care on Vincent VAN GOGH the time of his passage of Auvers. Impassioned by painting and engraving, it engraves with Pissarro and initiates Cézanne and Guillaumin as it will try to do it, later, with Vincent. This philanthropist is also large in love with the cats. He had some up to ten seven. It is into 1971 that Bernard Vercruyce starts to paint in a regular way. Little time afterwards, it meets a size-doucier at which, it discovers engraving. It launches out in this research and learns, by itself, the innumerable resources of copper-plate engraving (dry point, etching, aquatinte...) About 1975, it starts to carry out editions of engravings for the Gallery Pierre Hautot, street of the Vat in Paris. In 1978, it becomes acquainted with the critic of art Anatole JAKOVSKY, called "the Pope of naive" who did not cease defending it and to encourage it. It writes: "... engravings of Vercruyce always make me think of Strada de Fellini, at these moments of truth where the clowns discover suddenly that they have a heart. They make me also think, by rebound to some extent, with a good Flemish expressionnist Edgar Tytgat, considered a long time wrongly as naive "a This meeting was determining and beneficial, though too much short since this one dies out in September 1983. It is besides at that time that it enters under contract to the Gallery Jacques Boulan, street of the Saints Fathers in Paris. In 1990, it is with the Gallery Art-Expo street St Paul in Paris and by their intermediary that it exposes in many galleries in France and abroad. It collaborates regularly with the Coutau-Bégarie study in sales in Drouot. Since 1983, its work is directed towards art animalier and more particularly cat-like. Known in the microcosm of the world of arts animaliers, it is requested to illustrate works with many authors and carries out books of bibliophilism in original etchings on new texts of Robert de Laroche, Louis Nucéra, Irene Frain, with the editions of the "Cat Magus". - on October 11, 1994, Bernard Vercruyce is named Académicien of the Cat by Accademia dei gatti magici of Rome for the whole of his work. - Of February 4 at May 31, 2000, the Natural history museum of Orleans devotes to him a retrospective of its work (oils and watercolours.) - Of March 24 at May 8, 2005, it is the International Museum of Naïve art Anatole Jakovsky of the town of Nice which organizes the retrospective of its engraved work (Etchings and aquatintes) |
Artist's Workshop Article #252 - Artist #22349
