HSP painting "La Songeuse" Nude by André CLAUDOT (1892-1982) + frame

Oil painting on wood panel depicting a languid nude, titled "Dreamer" on the back and signed in felt-tip pen by the artist on the back. In keeping with the artist's Fauvist inspirations, this work is in good condition - please see the contractual photos. The frame is included (some traces of age, re-cut).
For your information, this work comes from a very fine collection of regionalist painters and minor local masters.

Panel size: 37.5 x 55 cm, with frame: 55 x 74 cm.

(Quick) Artist Bio:
Claudet André
Born February 14, 1892 in Dijon (Côte-d'Or), died June 13, 1982 in Loeilley (Haute-Saône); draftsman, painter in Paris, China, Paris, and then Dijon; Anticlerical, anarchist, socialist, and later a member of the French Communist Party.
His father, François Claudot, came from a family of violin makers from Mirecourt. He took him to Free Thought meetings and read The Anticlerical Republic.
André Claudot studied at the Lycée Carnot in Dijon, which he left to enter the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon in 1905. In 1909, he moved to Paris, where he lived while working for a company that made theater sets in Belleville, as well as in Les Halles and on the quays. He also experienced poverty. After the Paris flood of 1910, he even lived on the streets with the tramps.
During this period, he became friends with anarchist activists and returned to Dijon in 1912, where he became an anarchist activist. He was drafted in 1914 and continued to draw (clandestinely) for the far-left press. He finished the war in the Balkans. Demobilized in August 1919, he returned to Dijon where he married Suzanne Verriest. An exhibition of his war drawings was held in Dijon in 1922. He also claimed to have donated sketchbooks (400 drawings) to an anarchist group in Saint-Étienne (Loire) at the end of the war. In 1920, André Claudot moved back to Paris and exhibited at Parisian and Burgundian Salons (Salons des Indépendants, Salon d’Automne, Salon de l’Essor in Dijon), at the 1924 Automobile Show (as a decorator), and at the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. He was also a member of the Clergé Group (founded by the painter Auguste Clergé) of artists from Montparnasse. In 1926, his friend, the painter Marcel Bach, offered him the opportunity to share the exhibition space of the La Palette Française gallery at 151 Bd Haussmann, where he exhibited his paintings of “the zone” and Les Halles. One of his works was appreciated and purchased by the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, which increased his recognition. At that time, he could also count on the support of François Pompon, who, like him, was a member of the Burgundian literary and artistic association L'Essor, which included his friend Émile Rondinet and the future socialist mayor of the city, Robert Jardiller. In September 1926, bolstered by Bourdelle's appreciation and Pompon's support, according to his account in Écoutez Claudot, he left for China, at the instigation of his friend, the Chinese painter Lin Fengmian (Lin Fong-mien). For a year, he became a professor at the National Institute of the Arts in Beijing, where he was also friends with the painter Qi Baishi (Tsi-Pai Che). There, he came into contact with communist students and sympathizers, and violently protested against the coup d'état of Zhang Zuolin (Tchang-Tso-Lin), who had executed several of his students. Officially criticized for its teachings (study of the nude, street painting, use of oil paint), the school experienced funding problems related to these events, and Claudot's contract in Beijing was terminated. After the liberation of Beijing by the Kuomintang in 1928, he taught at the Hangzhou Art Institute (Hangzhou), founded in particular by Lin Fengmian, who brought him to the region. He thus became an important figure in the cooperation between French and Chinese artists, in liaison with international revolutionary networks.
His students included painters Li Keran, Hu Yichuan (1910-2000), and Chen Tiegeng.
Returning to Paris in 1930, he moved back to La Ruche, then in 1932, to the newly opened Cité des Artistes in Montmartre. These years were difficult, as evidenced by his unemployment cards in 1932, 1933, and 1934. Upon his return from China, he continued to exhibit in Parisian salons (Salons d’Automne, Salons des Indépendants, Salon de la Société des Artistes Français in 1933, Salon des Artistes Anciennes Combatants in 1934) until his return to Burgundy.
André Claudot joined the Freemasonry and belonged to the lodge Travail et vrais amis fidèles. Under the leadership of his friend Émile Rondinet, and with the arrival at the town hall of Robert Jardiller, he returned permanently to Dijon as a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in the late winter or early spring of 1935. He subsequently painted paintings

Ref: K598ZRAI50