A world-wild citizen

Childhood and formation

George BERNARD is born in Paris in 1924, his father Camille BERNARD was an officer of the Post Offices, interested by the indian culture; his mother Germaine LENAT was a lyric singer. His childhood was curled up by the sound of the piano that his mother was playing . His father was telling him some indian legends. All his holidays were the occasion to stroll along the Grand Morin river close to Paris, and he started laying out the landscape of the sparkling of the water, influenced by the Monet’s paintings.
After getting into the Art Déco school at 18 years old, he got the teachers such as Maurice Brianchon, Roland Oudot belonging to this movement “Réalité Poétique” . François Desnoyer and Marcel Gromaire were members of this group.

In parallel he studied the oriental philosophy.

 Dreams of trip

In 1954 he sailed to India, the journey lasted several weeks, and he got the opportunity to meet well-known personalities, as Mr. GiuseppeTucci, the famous ethnologist.

When he arrived in Bombay, he felt strongly his first emotions with this multicultural country. Then he decided to move to New Delhi where some friends were ready to welcome him. He met some French art lovers. He had the great honour to meet the Pandit Nehru, who gave favourable consideration to extend his Indian visa. He had also the great opportunity to be the private guide of André Malraux during his stays in New Delhi. Later on, he would become the first cultural Ministry of the French government under the Général De Gaulle.

He went to Sri Lanka in order to meet the great artist, George KEYT with him he shared his pictorial researches. His first exhibition in Colombo, untitled Du Miracle de la Vie (Meanings of Life) was opened by the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

A Chinese friend asked him to restore a French canvas of the 19^th century in Singapore. In 1964, this different meetings and contacts allowed him to carry out his second dreaming: discovering the Khmer temples of Angkor in Cambodia. The emotional surprise of this spiritual and preserved place was a continuous source of inspiration: he came back to Europe with many rough drawings which will be at the origin of several series of pictures.

Back to France

He settled down his easel in France near to Giverny where Claude Monet lived, the painter of the impressionist movement; then he went to Burgundy to return to his father’s origin and finally to the Provence where he founded the luminosity of the asian landscapes that he really loved. He kept on travelling to China, coming back with many sketchbooks at the origin of several representative artworks.

In 2005, George Bernard died and left more than 250 pictures, testimonies of his long artistic story which my mother and I wished to exhibit to the public.