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Michel Marie Poulain Signed Oil Painting 1953
About the Item
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Offering One Of Our Recent Palm Beach Estate Fine Art Acquisitions Of A
Large Colorful French Mid-Century 1953 Signed Oil Painting by Michel Marie Poulain
Entitled La Placette, La Colle s/Loup (A. M.) and as featured in her Michel-Marie Poulain First Edition book.
Approximate Measurements
Giltwood Frame: 40" w x 33" h
Painting: 31.5" w x 25.5" h
Condition
Painting is in good condition with no notable damage. Wood frame has some spots of wear to gold leaf finish and a few spots of discoloration on the linen matting as shown. The photos are an important part of the item description and condition so please use the zoom feature to view them closely.
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As colorful as her artwork, Poulain lived an extraordinary life which is reflected in her art. This compelling Mid Century Modern oil on Masonite board painting is signed both on front and on reverse and titled and dated on the reverse. The subject is a Paris street scene.
Michel-Marie Poulain (1906 - 1991) was a French transgender performer and painter whose style and technique were compared to those of Bernard Buffet and Marc Chagall.
Assigned male at birth, as a child Michel-Marie wore dresses at home and was sent to girls' school before attending a boys' high school (still with long hair). After cutting her hair short at 20, she served the national service with the dragoons. Afterwards, Poulain became a travesti cabaret performer under the name of Micky. There she met and married Solange, a fellow performer, and they had a daughter, Michele.
Poulain was also a painter, exhibiting at the Salon d'Hiver, the Salon d'Automne, the Salon des Indépendants, and the Salon des Tuileries in Paris. In the early 1930s, Poulain twice consulted the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, first in Berlin, then, after the destruction of his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in 1933, in Paris. Learning that Poulain wanted to be a woman and dressed as one, Hirschfeld offered to "make him into a woman," an offer Michel-Marie at the time declined. Poulain served as a senior-sergeant in World War II. She was a prisoner of war in a stalag from which she escaped in 1941.
After undergoing several surgical interventions in 1946, she increasingly dressed as a woman and publicly functioned as one. She became a high-fashion model and continued to be a cabaret dancer and a painter. She stayed with her wife, and their daughter called Michel-Marie "Papa," even in public.
Poulain opened a gallery in Cannes to exhibit her paintings. His friends were Colette, Jean Cocteau and dramatist Jean Anouilh She also practiced the art of stained glass and mural frescoes for churches, producing stained glass windows for the abbey La Colle-sur-Loup, decorating the Chapel of the White Penitents in Èze (1953), and restoring the chapel of Saint Sebastian, Sainte-Agnès, Alpes-Maritimes. She was a contemporary of Bernard Buffet, Claude Venard, Andre Dignimont, Charles Kvapil, Gen Paul, Leopold Survage, Andre Lhote and Georges Conrad. A biography by Claude Marais, J'ai choisi mon sexe (I chose my sex), was published in 1954. When not painting in Èze, she performed in shows in Paris, and even had her own night club, Le Vol de Nuit.
Poulain is buried in Èze.
Jean Anouilh wrote that Poulain's art transcended prurient interest, as the artist transcended gender:
Scandal, which always surrounds freedom, must not reflect on his work. Poulain is not an amusing figure of the Parisian fauna who also paints canvases, he is above all an artist, or better, a robust worker conscientious before the laws of his art. It was he who made the work of a creator, that is to say, a man in the best sense of the word. (Le scandale, qui entoure toujours la liberté, ne doit pas rejaillir sur son oeuvre. Poulain n’est pas une figure amusante de la faune parisienne qui brosse aussi des toiles, c’est avant tout un artiste, mieux: un ouvrier robuste et consciencieux devant les lois de son art. C’est lui qui a fait oeuvre de créateur, c’est-à-dire d’homme au meilleur sens du mot.) LGBTQ Bohemian artist.
Solo Exhibitions
Galerie Clausen, Paris, July 1938.
Galerie Paul Blauseur, Paris, November 1946.
Galerie d'art du Faubourg, Paris, March 1948.
Galerie Sélection, Paris, 1955.
Galerie Vendôme, Paris, 1957.
Galerie Marcel Bernheim, Paris, December 1963.
Group Exhibitions
Salon d'Hiver, Salon d'Automne, Salon des Indépendants et Salon des Tuileries, Paris, late 1931.
Philippe Marie Picard, Michel-Marie Poulain, Gerard Sekoto, Galerie Heyrène, Paris, 1952.
Collections, Private
The Luxembourg architect Paul Retter, a patron of Michel-Marie Poulain, owned many paintings which, after the collector's death, were sold at auction. Most of them, like that of Bettembourg and the dancing procession of Echternach, have remained in Luxembourger's hands.
Albert Sarraut.
Charles Trenet, who said he found in Poulain's work "a reflection of his own poetic zaniness" ("un reflet de sa propre loufoquerie poétique").
Public Collections
Musée de Cagnes-sur-Mer, Toulon, oil painting.
Société muséale Albert-Figueira, Èze, Portrait de Corinne Cottier-Abeille (1920-2007), drawing.
Centre Pompidou, Paris, La partie de cartes, oil painting.
- Dimensions:Height: 33 in (83.82 cm)Width: 40 in (101.6 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1953
- Condition:Wear consistent with age and use. Painting is in good condition with no notable damage. Wood frame has some spots of wear to gold leaf finish and a few spots of discoloration on the linen matting as shown. The photos are an important part of the item description and condition so plea.
- Seller Location:Lake Worth, FL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU5963234547722
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