29 - Robert Lépine (1929-2017) | French

Robert Lépine (1929-2017) | French Figures of Stone before the Black Mountain, 1966 Oil on Canvas Signed: Signed and dated ‘Lépine 66’ (lower left). Dimensions: Framed: 54.5 × 74 cm | 21.5 × 29.1 in Artwork: 53.5 × 73 cm | 21.1 × 28.7 in Provenance: Acquired in France. Private Collection, Spain. Condition: Oil on canvas, unlined, on its original stretcher. The paint layer is stable; light surface dust and a few minor scuffs to the impasto. Presented in a narrow wooden strip frame. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report. Conditions of Sale: All lots are sold as is, in the condition described. The condition summary is given as a courtesy; a full condition report is available on request before the sale. Attributions are governed by our Terms and Conditions. All enquiries must be made before bidding; no further information can be provided after the sale. By placing a bid you confirm that you have read and accept our Terms and Conditions in full, as set out in the terms of this sale. Shipping: Aurora & Athena coordinates professional, insured shipping for every purchase through vetted logistics partners: packing, transport, insurance and the export paperwork are arranged on the buyer's behalf and charged at the provider's cost. Buyers are equally welcome to collect in Barcelona or to appoint a carrier of their own. Lots are released once the total purchase price has been received. For shipments outside the EU an export licence may be required and Spanish export duties may apply to certain higher-value works; these are the buyer's responsibility. No export tax applies within the EU. Full shipping and export information is available on request. -- On a plain of yellow sand, under a grey sky in which white clouds hang like torn paper, stand creatures of weathered rock: a long-necked beast on the left, part camel, part eroded cliff, and on the right two hunched forms in pink and grey that might be bears or standing stones. Behind them a black pyramid of a mountain rises from a strip of turquoise sea, and two tiny human figures at its foot give the scale. The paint is scraped and dragged, the outlines drawn in black, the sand built up in warm impasto. Dated 1966, the picture belongs to the French post-surrealist vein of the 1960s, where the fantastic landscapes of Ernst and Tanguy were reworked in a freer, more painterly manner. Lépine’s rock-creatures are at once geology and zoology, and the painting reads as a dream of a desert shore, the kind of inner landscape that French painters of the period found between abstraction and figuration.