ArtistRodde, Michel

Artist Years1913-2009

Artist NationalityFrench

TitlePoppies

Yearca. 1975

MediumPainting > Oil

DimensionsCanvas: 23 X 18 inches

Accession NumberRC1602

NotesMichel Rodde is a French figurative painter and lithographer from the School of Paris, born on April 27, 1913 in La Grand-Combe (Gard).

Counting among his ancestors Carle and Horace Vernet, Michel Rodde, after obtaining his baccalaureate in philosophy, studied law at the Faculty of Law of Paris. He joined the 22nd Battalion of Alpine Chasseurs (2nd Company) in 1936, and joined the Nice garrison for two years. In 1938, he entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where his colleague was the poet Saint-John Perse. He returned to the 22nd B.C.A. in September 1939 when, mobilized with the rank of sergeant, he took part in the battle of Ailette (1940), then in that of the Marne. Then, it was during the Occupation that he discovered painting.

In 1946, Michel Rodde returned to the diplomatic administration while attending the studio of Édouard Georges Mac-Avoy at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. In 1956, he resigned from the administration to succeed Robert Humblot as professor of drawing at the École des métiers d'art, then, in 1965, Jean Aujame at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

Michel Rodde's travels are linked both to his exhibitions abroad and to his pictorial research: New York (1960 and 1964), Egypt (1974 and 1979), Japan (in 1989 where he stayed in Itsuku-shima, Kyoto, Nara and Tokyo), Norway (where in June 1989 he was particularly interested in the Lofoten Islands).

He lived between his apartment on rue Lecourbe in Paris and, from 1968, his studio in Montségur-sur-Lauzon (Drôme). Rodde died on February 20, 2009 in Aiguèze (Gard). He is buried in the Pont-Saint-Esprit cemetery
(source: wikipedia.org)