From Spain to Virginia The Life and Times of Pierre Daura - Catalog - Page 16
revolution. He became intimately familiar with radical
creative explorations of the Cubists, Fauvists, and
Expressionists, as well as other radical artistic movements
burgeoning in the French capital city. The year 1914 was a
tumultuous time to be arriving in Paris, for the next three
years coincided with the hostilities of the First World War.
The exhilaration of the young artist’s budding career was
undoubtedly accompanied by the challenges and hardships
of wartime deprivation and struggle.
By 1917, Daura returned home to fulfill compulsory service
in the Spanish military. After three years, he returned to
Paris of the 1920s to re-immerse himself in his artistic
pursuits. There he met his love Louise Heron Blair, a native
of Richmond, Virginia, who had ventured to Paris to study
art. Pierre and Louise married in 1928, and the new couple
moved from urban Paris to the small rural Saint-CirqLapopie located in south central France along the Lot River
in 1929, where they welcomed their only child, Martha, into
the world in 1930. To this day, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie retains
the character of a medieval village with dwellings of thick
stone walls and reddish tile roofs, all built upon a steep
bluff overlooking the river’s valley far below. At the town’s
highest point, there rises a Late-Gothic-style church perched
alongside ruins of an even earlier castle.
An aspect of Daura’s art less noted is his role as a colorist
of subtlety, distinction, and originality. Color is among the
most difficult visual experiences to describe through words.
Traditionally, one can speak of hue (naming the color on
the spectrum of visible light such as red, blue, yellow,
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Church and Presbytery, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, 1955-1971
Oil on canvas
Taubman Museum of Art
Gift of Martha Randolph Daura, 2003.019
Louise in Mallorcan Costume, 1932
Oil on canvas
Daura Museum of Art, University of Lynchburg
Gift of Martha R. Daura
etc.), or tone (the range from light to dark, determined by
the amount of white or black mixed into a pigment), or
saturation (an attempt to describe the density or intensity
or vibrancy of any color as determined by its relative
absorption or reflection of light waves). Despite difficulties
in translating the purely optical phenomenon of color
into spoken or written language, Daura’s precision and
expertise with chromatic variation can neither be denied nor
underestimated.
Je suis la lumière, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, ca. 1955
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
Collection of Robert and Misa Stuart
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