Serge Belloni "Le peintre de Paris" - Dawn over Venice oil on panel circa 1970
Serge Belloni, nicknamed "The Painter of Paris", devoted his life as a painter to retranscribing day after day, in all weathers, the face of Paris and he devoted another part of his life to Venice, showing another face of the Serenissima.
The second pole of his activity: Venice, for several months each year, in total solitude that he considered essential to creation. His tastes led him to Venice Minor, the oldest part of the city, where he found the boldness and strength of the first builders who gave the city its soul.
This lovely painting depicts a lovely view of the Grand Canal in Venice at dawn, with a soothing color palette that invites us to travel and dream.
Elegant and decorative oil on cardboard signed lower left Serge Belloni circa 1970.
Sizes unframed: H 11.81 In. - W 15.74 In.
Dimensions framed: H 19.68 In. - W 23.62 In.
Excellent condition, we offer this painting in its original condition, served by an lovely patinated frame.
Biography:
Serge Belloni, known as The Painter of Paris, is the son of the upholsterer Luigi Belloni and Elvira Belloni née Molinari. He moved to Paris in 1933 where he studied painting at the Ecole supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. He exhibited his paintings from 1946.
First prize of painting in Versailles (1949), Marie Bashkirtseff prize (1952), Silver Medal of the City of Paris, Vermeil Medal of the City of Paris (1980).
Serge Belloni was born in Piacenza, Italy, on February 25, 1925. As a child, he lived in Paris, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where his parents had lived for many years. His father, a craftsman, worked as an upholsterer-decorator.
Serge Belloni had to work part-time to pay for his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; these were difficult years that left their mark. At that time, he became friends with Lucien Moretti and Gérard Blondel.
At a very young age, Serge Belloni showed his work in exhibitions, following a solitary path from the beginning, far from genre groups.
He organized his first exhibition in Paris at the age of 21; from then on he lived solely, and without compromise, from his painting, carrying, as he likes to say, his cross every day. Whatever the weather, he painted "on the spot". Numerous trips to Holland allowed him to study, on the spot, the secrets of the Flemish masters. He worked on the rediscovery of ancient techniques that he would never stop perfecting. He uses the egg painting technique.
Serge Belloni works every day, in all seasons, without ever stopping, as if life was escaping him at every moment. His paintings are in the most important collections: Paris, Milan, Moscow, and New York ...
Serge Belloni died in Menton on October 28, 2005.
Museums:
Carnavalet Museum in Paris where several of these works are kept.
Museum CA' Pesaro in Venice.
Giorgio Gamberini
Italian journalist
My first encounter with Serge Belloni was in the early 1950s. A friend we had in common, director of the newspaper in Plaisance (the town where Belloni was born), had asked me to get in touch with him. At the time, the artist was preparing an exhibition dedicated to Paris and Venice: the third that he presented to a particularly demanding public, that of his adopted city. I therefore had to meet him, see his latest works and say or rather write if, in my opinion, they fulfilled the promises of the young painter to whom two illustrious poets and a few enlightened amateurs had predicted, a few years earlier, a brilliant future.
The interview began in a restaurant on the Île Saint-Louis and continued in the small workshop at 25, quai d'Anjou (since abandoned by Belloni for the less bohemian but more comfortable one at 27, quai de Bourbon).
I was won over from the first moment. First of all by the man passionately loving all that is beautiful, the generous idealist sensitive to all the sufferings of the world; then, having seen his paintings, by the artist.
At Belloni, the man and the artist are one and the same. In meetings with friends as in all social evenings, in the privacy of his studio as in the streets where he paints in all weathers, during the rare leisure time he allows himself as in full creation, Serge remains equal to itself. If I had to define him in a few words, I would say: he lives his painting as he lives his life, with courage and simplicity; he is his painting.
He is his painting and his work is a whole. Whether it's his lively still lifes, his moving portraits, his bouquets of rare luminosity, or the admirable landscapes of Paris and elsewhere.
He is called "the painter of Paris". We could also call him the painter of the five seasons, the fifth being that of the heart, of poetry in its purest form, of the feelings expressed by the sumptuous arc of his palette.
Many of my colleagues have written in recent years that Serge Belloni does not contribute to any chapel, and does not belong to any school except that of a job well done. That's right.
For my part, I would add that since the day I met him for the first time, his goal has remained the same: to strive tirelessly and with all his might toward an ideal of perfection.
