Édouard Pignon is a French painter of the new School of Paris, born February 12, 1905 in Bully-les-Mines (Pas-de-Calais) and died May 14, 1993 in La Couture-Boussey (Eure).

His abundant work, difficult to classify, develops in series around various themes which follow one another or unfold simultaneously, sometimes intertwining: dramas of the working condition, boat sails and olive trunks, peasant work, cockfights , horror of wars, naked divers and sunny beaches. With Picasso, with whom he was intimate for three decades, he fought in the 1950s against the systematism of socialist realism, without however joining his non-figurative painter friends with whom he very frequently exhibited from the 1940s in France and abroad. In interviews recorded and published between 1962 and 1987, Pignon himself often spoke of his personal adventure and his pictorial approach, notably in La Quête de la vérité1, in 1966, and in Contre-courant2, in 1974. The novelist and essayist Hélène Parmelin (1915-1998), whom he married in 1950, wrote a detailed account of his itinerary, in 1976 and then in 1985.
Marles-les-Mines (1905-1927)

Édouard Pignon in Pas-de-Calais where his father, an underground miner, left Marles-les-Mines following a quarrel, but returned there a few weeks later. In 1912, young Édouard witnessed the tragedies caused by a firedamp explosion which left 79 dead in the Clarence mine:

    “We heard a huge explosion. Everyone, children and adults alike, ran towards the mine, located a few kilometers away. (…) I saw the workers being brought up, burned, screaming or dead. Afterwards we closed the gates. The parents of those who had remained in the pit, the women clung on, screaming3. »

The child also witnessed the major miners' strikes: “I was six years old, I went out to see what was happening, and there was a charge of dragoons, sabers drawn, on their big horses.(…) I found myself among all the miners running, and the horses galloping behind them. (…) There were strikers who cut the horses’ hocks with razors”4. These images would later resurface in his paintings.

In 1912, Pignon entered the municipal school where his drawings were appreciated, but where the red color of his hair was the cause of numerous fights. During the war of 1914, the school closed; he lives in the café run by his mother: “This café was an enormous book for me. I listened to everything. I collected everything. People came from everywhere, of different nationalities, or from different cities. During the war – we were ten kilometers from the front – there were soldiers all over the house, in the barns behind, everywhere, soldiers who came on leave, soldiers who went up to the front.”

One of them draws his portrait with colored pencils, which helps to accentuate his desire to draw:

    “He painted my portrait. He gave it to me as a gift. And I was amazed by this power of resemblance. There was great magical power there. And it haunted me. At the basis of my life as a painter, there is certainly the little trigger of this soldier. I never knew where he came from or where he was going5. »

Goya, The Young People.
Goya, The Old Women.

In 1919, Pignon, despite his father's wishes, joined the mine as a "galibot", the following year he became a construction laborer and then a cement worker-ceiling worker. He read, enrolled in a correspondence drawing course in 1922, engraved and painted: “Someone had poured plaster into a plate, and put a color photo in the middle. I watched it, I found it amusing. And when I got home, I poured some plaster into a plate, and instead of putting a photograph on it, I painted something. (…) I copied postcards, I forced my brother to undress to pose, or I copied everything that came to hand”6.

Pignon made a first trip to Paris in 1923 and then visited the Lille museum:

    “One day I went to the Lille museum, and I saw The Young and the Old People by Goya. I came back from there feeling sad. The painting was a magnificent, extraordinary thing. But it seemed inaccessible to me, impossible to conquer6. »

Incorporated into the aviation in 1925, Pignon did his military service in Syria in a photography workshop, continuing to draw. He decided to renounce the use of patois and only express himself in French. Returning to Marles, he returned to the mine then worked on the construction of the headframes. He began to paint portraits of his loved ones in oil.
Pre-war and the Occupation (1927-1944)

Pignon moved to Paris in 1927, was hired by Citroën as a specialized worker, but was quickly dismissed. He then became a pointer at the Telephone Company. He painted after his work at Sanary and Vallauris (1949-1958)

During the summer of 1949 Pignon stayed in Italy then for the first time in Sanary in the Var, where he painted the port, mainly carrying out studies which would be the source for almost ten years