ladies on beds - four paintings by Francis Gruber

Femme sur un lit rouge, 1946.

Femme étendue sur un lit, 1948.

Le Lit rouge, 1944.

Femme sur un canapé, 1945.

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Francis Gruber (15 March 1912, Nancy - 1 December 1948, Paris), French painter, founder of the Nouveau Réalisme school. The son of stained glass artist Jacques Gruber, he first exhibited at the age of 18. While other artists were embracing abstraction, he preferred to paint the figure, being influenced by Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald, and the engraver Jacques Callot. Asthmatic since childhood, he died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-six. He was buried in the village cemetery in Thomery, Seine-et-Marne, where he had lived for some years; his close friend Alberto Giacometti contributed a sculpture (now missing) for his grave and poet Louis Aragon gave his funeral oration.