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“You're not even twenty and you've already encountered human pain.

Your painting is impregnated with it. We were the same age, and I know what it's like to be an adolescent wounded by the incomprehension of the adult world.

You could have screamed your revolt in a different way, like many young people of our generation. It seems you were born a painter. Quite naturally, you chose the image to tell us about your solitude, your faith, your love of people and nature, and above all your distress in the face of human misery, both physical and moral.

You entered painting as one enters religion. Each of your paintings probably has its own story, but you didn't like grand phrases. You used to say that a painting is enough in itself. And yet, the sea and the beach are full of nostalgia, no doubt due to regrets about vacations in Brittany with a much-loved mother. But you weren't a man to live in the past.

You soon became a witness to everyday life as you felt it. You painted what was in front of you. Your still lifes, which have sometimes been described as miserabilistic, are a very real reflection of an impoverished age. Your characters, often hieratic, always painful and so terribly alone, resemble you, but they also resemble your contemporaries. Through them, you illustrate your gospel, proclaiming your horror of war and your rejection of human misery that never ends. From the “Pietà” to the “barricade”, we find tears in your eyes.

It's this uncompromisingly truthful painting that has made you famous. Your sincerity is obvious. You never betrayed it. You never deviated from the line you had drawn for yourself. If the substance of your thinking has remained the same, this has not prevented your work from evolving, both in terms of mastery of color and ease of drawing.

These “Paintings for a Museum” are, in a way, the first chapter in the book of your life. A chapter which, thanks to Maurice Garnier, will be followed by many others. I hope from the