Description

PAUL MANTES
A fantastic painter
(1920-2004)

Medidas: Alto 265 cm x Ancho 160 cm

In the presence of certain works, like certain landscapes, one feels a cloudy, deep feeling of "déjà vu". Followers of reincarnation will tell you that this feeling is a recurring reminiscence or memory of a previous life.
So, recently, I visited the studio of Paul Mantes, a painter where, from the start, in front of paintings of a fantastic realism, I felt overwhelmed. My mind went into "phase", as if the current of an unknown energy was connecting me to these works.

At first glance, these glossy paintings, of a classical style, are nothing extraordinary. Some of them represent the ruins of an ancient maritime civilization after an unknown cataclysm: remains of collapsed palaces, wounded colonnades, grounded caravels.

Others, of unreal beauty, present us mysterious women with fascinating charm.
These works emanate a force, a power, an energy such that after having seen them, one does not feel quite the same. They magnetize us, dop us, recharge us. However, these palaces and these dream creatures do not seemingly contain anything transcendent!

In fact, these chimerical beauties bewitch us, these ruined palaces rising to the sky make us want to build, to create a new world; these wounded ships, these prows turned towards the open sea invite us to adventure, to conquer these haughty, bruised columns, anchored in a cloudless sky, there emanates a quiet desire, desperate for rebirth, a supernatural force.
Fascinated by the magic of the work, we no longer know if we are still on Earth or already in another world, if the red disc of the sun which radiates in the pale azure sky behind the laces of broken stones is that of the rising sun or setting sun, whether the supernatural light is that of a fiery dawn or that of a frozen and desperate twilight.

In the 90s, Paul Mantes lavishly illustrated some of the covers of our magazine.

(Marc Schweizer: in Science & Magic 1995)

Biographical sketch
Grand Prix de Rome for painting, Paul Mantes taught at the Boulle School and at the Paris School of Fine Arts.

Grand Prix de Rome for painting, Paul Mantes taught at the Boulle School and at the Paris School of Fine Arts.

D.P.L.G. architect, he created buildings, villas, administrative buildings and in particular projects to put the Defense district into perspective. He was relieved when his project for the pharaonic building which was to rise in place of the Orsay station - a plan his boss had entrusted him with - was not accepted!
An exceptional painter, Paul Mantes graduated from the Paris School of Fine Arts as a major and second from the Prix de Rome. After a busy career as a DPLG architect in a prestigious firm, he returned to his first vocation: painting.

Despite his exceptional talent, Paul Mantes failed to establish himself in the artistic jungle as he had succeeded in architecture.

A hard worker, meticulous and persevering, he was approved in the very closed world of copyists of the National Museums, in particular the Louvre and the Musée dOrsay.

This is how he reproduced some thirty major paintings which allowed him to make himself known to a few insiders, when a television producer preparing his film on Vincent Van Gogh was not authorized to film an original.
It was a magnificent copy of a self-portrait of the artist created by Paul Mantes which was chosen and toured the world.

Van Gogh by Paul Mantes

specialist recognized for his trompe-l?il technique, his "hobby" became one of his favorite fields.
This also gave an idea to this producer who persuaded the painter to entrust him with twenty of his copies for a highly publicized traveling exhibition in Asia.

Since then, these paintings have been rented to the nouveau riche from the Far East who exhibit them in their living rooms during their receptions!

Paul Mantess personal work therefore includes many copies of originals from the Louvre or Orsay museums, sumptuous "trompe loeil", and a remarkable personal work: "Cités imaginaires", "Paradis perdus", " Dreamlike visions ?, incredible Palladian visions of ruined metropolises, of solitary cathedrals in a desert ravaged by vandals, sometimes with surprising baroque canvases of religious inspiration.

One of his unrealized dreams was to be entrusted with one of the innumerable abandoned churches that abound in our country to restore it, illustrate it, adorn it, and magnify it with his talent.

In his creative passion Paul Mantes went so far as to "invent" an impressionist painter, recreating from scratch in his studio in Neuilly, the work that has become very real under his brush, of an imaginary painter. Extraordinary!

Mantes carried within him a baroque world, which he beautifully interpreted but whose contemplation was reserved for those around him.

Since his studio apartment at 59 boulevard du Cdt. Charcot in Neuilly was stripped of its splendours by iconoclastic heirs, remains alone, near the Place des Ternes, in a vast attic fitted out by the artist for one of his muses, his architectural masterpiece that we unfortunately no longer visit.
This superb volume on three levels, while trompe loeil, with marble stairs leading nowhere, bay windows opening onto the roofs of an improbable and fantastic Paris, virtual lounges with baroque furniture, unreal, adorned with flowers, animals, paintings and strange sculptures, is in itself a magnificent masterpiece.

You can walk for a long time, tirelessly in this maze, and get lost in it as in a jungle, seeing female faces appear in real or false mirrors of breathtaking beauty, terrifying ghosts chasing enigmatic monsters.
At the bend of a corridor we find ourselves in the sky, flying over the sparkling city in a basket suspended from a hot-air balloon, followed by a procession of angels and dream birds.

Sometimes, a real staircase is extended by a virtual staircase leading the visitor towards appearances which brush against him, while the celestial music of an invisible orchestra explodes.

Paul Mantes the Enchanter was a serious and serious man with a sharp and painful look.
Follower of a healthy life, of frugal food, he was a great walker, a mountain climber, a solitary hiker able to get from Chamonix to Zermatt in less than a week, to connect Geneva to Nice by ridge lines, without apparent effort, sleeping under the stars in his sleeping bag.

The last memory, the last vision that I keep of him dates from an early morning in December, just after the storm that towards the end of the century ravaged France, a stunned, bewildered Paul Mantes wandering in an alley in the Bois de Boulogne close to his home, crossing like a sleepwalker the stumps of large felled trees on the paths ...

We passed each other in the mist without speaking to each other, and I will long remember his beautiful, pathetic gaze, lost in amazement at this sight of desolation, so similar to one of his most secret visions.

Dispersion of the work, the workshop put up for auction
In January 2011 more than 100 paintings by Paul Mantes were scattered in Drouot by the study Maître Ader. Fortunately, the centerpieces of his work escaped disaster, in particular his superb attic in the Ternes district, converted into a trompe-loeil.

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