Oil on Canvas, 58x50cm.
Gustave Lino 1893-1961
Provenance: Ex-private collection, Paris
Gustave Lino was a French painter born in Mulhouse, October 27th 1893, and died in Algiers in 1961.
He sailed for Algiers at the age of 19 in 1912, but was put in “civil prison” in Ajecco, Corsica in 1914 as a German citizen (Mulhouse was part of the German Empire since 1871). He spent the First World War on the Island of Beauty and painted among other subjects the historic Hotel Solferino Ajaccio and also completed religious decorations at the Castle Malaspena, Massa Belgodere.
By December 1918 he had returned to Algiers, where he became a pupil of Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse. He exhibited at the Salon of French Artists in 1926, and Danton gallery Rue La Boetie in 1927. Besides Algeria, where there are paintings permanently held in Algiers and Bou-Saada, he travelled to Italy (coast of Naples, Sicily), Spain, Morocco and Tunisia; Sidi Bou Said, Tunis-Bizerte.
He was a painter of the group known as the “Painters of Poetic Reality” (with Jean Cavailles Legueult, Planson, Maurice Brianchon), and was a close friend of Albert Marquet. Marcelle Marquet said of him that “he succeeded better than the Marquet himself”. He was also praised by Albert Camus who said of Gustave Lino “His seascapes, if one feels the influence of Marquet, are not less real successes, sensitive, fresh and unique” (about the Salon Algerian artists of 1934). His palette is very colourful, often linear, with a predilection for a blue motif, not just of the northern cities of Algeria, but also the landscapes of southern Laghouat, Touggourt or El Oued, and Italy.
He was a prominent member of the School of Algiers, he exhibited at the Galerie de l’Institut rue de Seine in 1956, and posthumously received the last Grand Prix Artistic of Ageria in 1962.
