"The Horse Race" #50 A
Pierre Bosco (Italy/France, 1909-1993)
Oil on canvas
14 1/4 x 10 3/4 inches, frame size
“The savage art of Bosco bears its rudeness and its mystery. It is an art of pure expression that is not made to please, of course, but whose sincerity cannot do anything but capture your attention.”
-Carrefour Literary Magazine 1963
Pierre Bosco showed an interest in art at a young age and his early works showed a natural sensitivity to color and a willingness to give volume to images, which will later develop into his artistic signature. When he first discovered paintings of Cézanne, Pissarro, Gauguin and Rouault, he was convinced that his future was in Paris. There he meets the artists Pierre Bonnard, André Derain, Aristide Maillol, Edouard Vuillard and his brother-in-law, the Nabi painter Ker-Xavier Roussel, who becomes his great spiritual master and with whom he will discover his own artistic personality.
In the 1950s he began to realize greater success participating in an exhibition at the Paris Museum of Modern Art where his paintings received high praise. The following year he exhibited fifty paintings at the Galerie du Hérisson to an enthralled public.
The French press associated the paintings of this period to “bewitching magic,” and according to the poet Guy Lavaud, “Bosco is a powerful painter and a visionary.” For three consecutive years the painter was selected for the prestigious prize at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.
1956, Bosco signed a contract for fifteen years with the famed Galerie de l'Elysée in Paris for exclusive representation. At this point in his career, Pierre Bosco had reached a maturity that was appreciated by art connoisseurs as well as the press which was unanimous in praising his "dazzling visions;" Le Figaro considered him "as one of the greatest painters of his generation;" and the New York Herald viewed him as "the latest Picasso in perspective, and very much in vogue" (May 14, 1957).
By now Bosco now has achieved his place among the biggest names in contemporary painting: Chagall, Braque, Picasso, Matisse; his paintings enter permanent collections of museums.
In 1964 he exhibited at the Max Bodner gallery in New York; his paintings are presented among those of Marie Laurencin, Picasso, Signac, Pissarro, Renoir and Rouault. In April 1967 Bosco was awarded the Silver Medal of the City of Paris and in June he was made Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture.
Pierre Bosco occupies a privileged place among American and European collectors, particularly in France and Italy, but also in Scandinavian countries. Numerous Hollywood celebrities such as Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Jack Palance, as well as former French President Georges Pompidou, were all collectors of Bosco paintings.
His works are also found in the collections of Museum of the City of Paris; National Library of France; Tel Aviv; Caramulo (Portugal), Beaverbrook Art Gallery (NB, Canada); Toledo Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, etc.