Jacques Fromonot (French/Brazilian born 1926)

"It has been said that style makes the man; the same holds true for painting. Fromonots canvases are first and foremost the work of a dedicated craftsman, in love with his craft, who, having left for Brazil at the age of twenty-three, with his engineering degree, returns eight years later, hailed as a painter by his adoptive land.

His paintings reveal to us the intensity of his temperament, geared to action, which he inherited from his father, a native of Lyons, as well as the poetic and idealistic lyricism which he draws from Provence, through his mother.

During those eight years, Fromonots patiently perfected his technique and stored up a wealth of imagery. Georges Rouaults great stroke of inspiration was to transpose the techniques of stained glass to oil painting. Fromonot, to convey the fervor of his land of sun and chlorophyll, uses the glamor of mosaic.

The plain song of light, the response of overstimulated vegetation, are translated by an accumulation of square brush strokes, resemblingsmalts of marble, enamel, or precious stones.

Warmth encloses shapes from which all excess details have been pruned. The frenzy of gesture and action are suited to a hieratical immobility.

A counterpoint of rhythms and colors conjures up the capital, "Rio" its peaks and skyscrapers, the motley festivals of "Black Orpheus".

Only the fresh, enchanted gazes of a youth pure in heart, determined to risk all to tell of his love, could achieve such a hymn to the beauty of Brazil, a land of contrasts and excesses, where human suffering is consumed by a purifying flame."

Yves Sjoberg

Cultural and Technical Affaires Office

Diplomatic Corps of South America