Symbolist painter: the work of Lucien levy-Durmay

Among the brightest representatives of the art direction "modern" is worth noting one outstanding graphic artist and painter, born on September 30, 1865 – Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer. As a young man, he left his homeland, Algeria, and went to live in Paris, where he devoted time to the study of drawing and sculpture. Then he moved to the South of France, where he got a job in a manufactory, where he decorated faience products with ornaments. Returning to Paris, he took up painting in earnest.

Levi-Durme's paintings quickly became popular. They were positively reviewed by critics and artists. His work was warmly welcomed by symbolists, publicists wrote long articles about him. The master's paintings were often compared to the works of the pre-Raphaelites. Paying attention to every detail, the author used the methods of impressionism to Express his ideas. He idealizes reality, for example, in the "Breton Madonna", where the image of a peasant woman holding a child is the embodiment of Holiness, expressed through a special gesture and a glow surrounding the figures. The arrangement of the figures is similar to what we can see on icons.

At the beginning of the XX century, Levi-Durme retreated from symbolism and began to pay more attention to landscape painting. Goes to his native Algeria, where he writes a series of paintings related to this country. The artist turned to musical works, tried to capture the compositions of Beethoven and Debussy on canvases. The painter died in 1953 in France.