BIOGRAPHICAL LANDMARKS

1940

THE ART OF DRAWING

At the age of 20, he goes back to Paris. In order to make a living, he works as a supervisor in a school for deaf-and-dumb children and at the Museum of French Monuments. He improves his drawing technique at the Decorative Arts, and in Othon Friesz’s studio, at the Academy of La Grande Chaumière, he learns the art of lithography. At that time he intends to become an art teacher.

Achille-Émile Othon Friesz, a French painter, was a pupil of Charles Lhuillie at the Le Havre and Paris schools of art, along with Georges Braque and Raoul Dufy. At the 1905 Autumn Fair, he presented paintings which would rank him as one of the most brilliant Fauvist painters. His paintings were later exhibited in Paris, Moscow, London, Berlin and New York. After WWII, he decided to become an art teacher.

Chimpanzee

Cats

Gorilla

Register of Gourmelin’s enrolment at the national school of Decorative Arts, academic year 1942-1943.