Odilon Redon (1840-1916)
A little bit about his life...
Redon used oiled charcoal extensively as it was easier to be worked into the paper than ordinary charcoal as it turns to powder. Over time as the oil gets absorbed by the paper it exhibits an overall brown tone. Charcoal can be identified in his noirs by its warmer, black, brown tone.
He didn't start using colour till he was in his 50s. In his earlier pastels he applied colour over charcoal underdrawings, combining pastel, guache and pastes made form crushed pastel mixed with water and applied with a brush. Occasionally he would take a noir produced years earlier and rework it, obscuring much of the noir beneath the pastel.
A little bit about his life...
Odilon Redon was a keen artist from a very young age. He studied art formally at the age of fifteen but because of his father's influence he moved over to architecture. After his failure in studying the latter subject, he took up painting, sculpture, etching and lithography.
Having served in the army in 1890 during the Franco-Prussian war, he then turned his attention to working with charcoal and lithography and called his visionary works 'noirs'. After that period he started using pastels and oils and took an interest in Hinduism and Buddhism, hence the presence of Buddha in some of his works.
Redon used oiled charcoal extensively as it was easier to be worked into the paper than ordinary charcoal as it turns to powder. Over time as the oil gets absorbed by the paper it exhibits an overall brown tone. Charcoal can be identified in his noirs by its warmer, black, brown tone.
He didn't start using colour till he was in his 50s. In his earlier pastels he applied colour over charcoal underdrawings, combining pastel, guache and pastes made form crushed pastel mixed with water and applied with a brush. Occasionally he would take a noir produced years earlier and rework it, obscuring much of the noir beneath the pastel.
In preparation for his drawing....... Redon would prepare the paper with an overall base of powdered charcoal. As he built his compositions with layers of media, he intermittently fixed the surface and again subtracted media from it. Before the spray could dry he reworked the damp charcoal surface with his fingers and removed charcoal, or indeed his fingernail to create texture.....
In 1900 he was commissioned by Baron Domecy to create 17 panels for the dining room of the Chateu de Domecy sur le vault. He moved on from ornamental to abstracts and the colours that he used mostly were yellow, grey, brown and light blue. In 1903, he was awarded the Legion of Honour.
During Odilon Redon's early years, his works were described as ' a synthesis of nightmares and dreams'. His paintings incorporated dark, fantastical figures from his imagination, exploring his own internal feelings and psyche.
He wanted to place 'the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible'. His charcoal sketches delved in deep into the terrors of fever ridden dreams. Redon describes his works as ambiguous and undefinable. 'My drawings are to inspire and not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined'.
source: www.odilon-redon.org/biography.html
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