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©
VEGAP, Madrid
Alfred Manessier

Composition Blue-Red (Seascape)

1949
Oil on canvas.
41 x 62 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1961.5
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
"It is a question of looking for a language or a plastic sign able to convey at the same time the world of the senses as an emotion and the spiritual world as a final revelation; to uncover, by authentically plastic means, the spiritual equivalence of the outside world and of a more interior world." This piece was painted in 1949 in the studio situated on the second floor of the house with a garden the artist had been renting for almost ten years in the area of Montparnasse, at 203 rue de Vaugirard, in the 15th arrondissement in Paris, where Manessier lived with his family and worked until it was demolished by property developers in 1973.

For Manessier, 1949 represented his establishment as a painter on the threshold of an international career. In fact, that same year-three years after the exhibition at the Galerie Drouin in Paris with his friends Jean le Moal and Gustave Singier, which attracted particular attention-Alfred Manessier, then aged 38, held two personal exhibitions in Paris. In the month of April, the Galerie Jeanne Bucher presented his first lithographs and a set of paintings on the subject of Easter. His second exhibition opened at the end of the year at the Galerie Billiet-Caputo; the critic André Warnod acknowledged Manessier as: "a greatly gifted colourist who produces sumptuously orchestrated harmonies and symphonies. The subjects he deals with are obviously more suggested that represented, but they are nevertheless present there."

1949 was also marked by the continuation of the building work on the church of Bréseux, a small village in Franche-Comté, where Manessier had been summoned in 1948 by a daring young priest from the dioceses of Besançon, Canon Lucien Ledeur, to create his first stained-glass windows which proved to be-beyond the scandal they caused-exemplary, since they were also the first in the history of sacred art to dare be non-figurative.

This non-figurative approach, characteristic of Manessier's style in that period, is expressed in its purest form in this painting in a "12 landscape" format. Unfortunately, we have very few elements which enable us to reconstruct a rich individual history: there is no mention of it in exhibitions, only the trace of a public sale in Stuttgart, followed by its entry in 1961 in Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza's prestigious collection, where it has been kept away from the eyes of the public until now.

In this poetical composition, at first sight mysterious and "abstract", we discover a partial network of blue lines and darker overtones which stand out against a juxtaposition of shapes and planes coloured differently, interrelating through the pictorial interplay of cold colours (modulation of blue and green hues with a turquoise dominant) "in the surface" and of warm colours (modulation of madder red, orange and reddish ochre hues.) "in the background". A few discrete touches of lighter shades of yellowish ochre, bluish grey and mauve give an impression of depth. When listening to this painting, whose major chord creates a lively harmony between all these different colours and saturated qualities of joy and freshness, do we not suddenly hear an echo of the happiness which the artist found in the act of painting, for him essentially an act of love? And let us simply follow the writer Jean Guichard-Meili when he wrote: "those who can contemplate in silence and peace the works of Manessier (which were painted for silence and peace), feel rising in them that impetus, that jubilation of the eye and the heart together, while they feel overwhelmed by the presence of the mystery approaching, rising to the surface of the painting. A mystery transformed into spiritual light and celebrated, in joy, by a grateful man." Thematically, this rhythmic composition of traits and signs is different from the series of works painted in 1949 to celebrate Easter and the Passion of Christ. With the help of his wife, Alfred Manessier used to give every work he finished a title to indicate his intention with regard to the subject treated. The very vague title of this painting-Blue-Red Composition-was certainly not their choice, as it is written in German on a canvas frame which does not seem original, and was probably due to the requirements of the Stuttgart auction of 1961. But did it have an original title?.

Christine Manessier

20th CenturyPaintingOilcanvas
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Composition Blue-Red (Seascape). Composición azul-roja (Marina), 1949
Composition Blue-Red (Seascape)
Alfred Manessier

©

VEGAP, Madrid

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Composition Blue-Red (Seascape). Composición azul-roja (Marina), 1949
Composition Blue-Red (Seascape)
Alfred Manessier

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VEGAP, Madrid

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