MARIUS DE BUZON (1879-1958)
Laila Gouraya (660 m - 2,165 ft)
Algeria
In La bucolique Kabylie, oil on canvas, 1923 112 x186 cm, Musée des Beaux Arts de Bordeaux
The mountain
Laila Gouraya (660 m - 2,165 ft) also named Yemma Gouray is a mountain that overlooks the city of Béjaïa in Algeria. It would also be the burial place of the saint patron of the city, Yemma Gouraya, but no archaeological evidence exists.
According to tradition, Yemma Gouraya was the sister of Yemma Mezghitane, saint patron of Jijel, and Yemma Timezrit, saint patron of Timezrit.
Mount Gouraya is part of the Gouraya National Park. It is a protected area, very popular with tourists: it welcomes around 1,200,000 visitors a year, especially in summer.
The painter
Frederic Marius de Buzon is a French painter of the school of Algiers of Spanish ancestry, descendant of Francisco de Goya.
In 1939, the well known french journalist and writer Max-Pol Fouchet said about him in Algeria : "The praise of M. de Buzon seems to me useless to do. We know the serious and powerful art of this painter, but he also knows how to release on his canvases a Corotian tenderness before such a French landscape. He moves only more." While according to Victor Barrucand, "he highlighted the essential lines of the landscapes, sculpting large swathes of the Kabyles valleys " .
He is knighted by the Legion of Honor.
He is considered, and quoted, as the "cantor of Kabylie" and one of the founders of the School of Algiers (following Maxime Noiré, and with Léon Carré, Léon Cauvy, Paul Jouve). He also paints landscapes and types of the region of Bougie, the Mzab (where he is one of the first painters to enter, after Étienne Dinet, with Maurice Bouviolle, Touggourt where he regularly stays after 1945 (L'Heure Blonde, 1950), Témacine (1953), and Sidi Bou Saïd, or Spain and Morocco, Casablanca, Rabat or Fez.
His works are highly sought after by collectors as representing scenes of Kabyle life, landscapes, pastoral scenes; "He substitutes for the notion of ethnic identification, that infinitely more poetic allegory " wrote Élisabeth Cazenave, while in 1930 Pierre Angel : "Marius de Buzon continued on these African shores the ancient dreams of the pagan mysticism. "
He is considered, and quoted, as the "cantor of Kabylie" and one of the founders of the School of Algiers (following Maxime Noiré, and with Léon Carré, Léon Cauvy, Paul Jouve). He also paints landscapes and types of the region of Bougie, the Mzab (where he is one of the first painters to enter, after Étienne Dinet, with Maurice Bouviolle, Touggourt where he regularly stays after 1945 (L'Heure Blonde, 1950), Témacine (1953), and Sidi Bou Saïd, or Spain and Morocco, Casablanca, Rabat or Fez.
His works are highly sought after by collectors as representing scenes of Kabyle life, landscapes, pastoral scenes; "He substitutes for the notion of ethnic identification, that infinitely more poetic allegory " wrote Élisabeth Cazenave, while in 1930 Pierre Angel : "Marius de Buzon continued on these African shores the ancient dreams of the pagan mysticism. "
Marius de Buzon died at the end of November 1958 in Algiers; his son Jean and grandson Jean-Frédéric were murdered in 1962 while trying to move and save the workshop of their father and grandfather.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau