Lucien Clergue’s mother, who had raised him on her own, dreamed he would become an artist. When she fell ill, he spent every day at her bedside until her death. This difficult adolescence is a key to understanding the dark imagery of Lucien Clergue’s early work. He regularly submitted his latest efforts to his friends Jean-Marie Magnan and Jean-Maurice Rouquette. It was these photos that struck a chord with Picasso when Lucien Clergue showed them to him after a bullfight. Thus encouraged, Clergue quickly followed up with series representing harlequins, or children wearing disguises and posing over several afternoons in the rubble of the bombed-out city, staging melancholy scenes. Lucien Clergue admitted later to portraying himself in the figure of a little boy with a violin.
François Hébel and Christian Lacroix
EXHIBITION
Lucien Clergue 1934 – 2014
From November 14th, 2015 to February 25th, 2016
Le Grand Palais
avenue Winston Churchill
75008 Paris
France
http://www.grandpalais.fr
