1900-1980

He was a French painter of portraits, urban landscapes, scenes with figures, still lives, watercolourist and a draughtsman.

Pierre Sicard was born in Paris in 1900, the son of famous sculptor Francois Sicard.

Although he had no special training in art and attended a regular French school, his sketches from an early age showed a great curiosity with the atmosphere of the nightlife in dancehalls and bars. For a time he worked with his father doing sculpture, but he began to paint seriously in 1924.

Sicard’s style and technique has much in common with the Postimpressionists, but initially his subjects were the wild and romantic scenes of the Parisian bars and night clubs. He travelled extensively throughout Europe and the far east inspiring landscapes to be added to his subject matter.

His first exhibition was in 1926 at the Galerie Durand Ruel and then between 1929-1930 at the Galerie George Petit in Paris and again in 1932.

During German occupation of France, despite restrictions on artists, he continued to paint and became the “official artist of the war” and also worked on tapestries for the French army.

Sicard made numerous trips to New York and Los Angeles and in 1950 he settled with his wife in Bel Air, Los Angeles. In 1951 he had his first exhibition at the Dalzell Hatfield Gallery where he achieved immediate success and admiration from critics and collectors. A year later he exhibited again at Paris this time including paintings of Los Angeles and New York that shows the same exuberance that existed in his earlier work depicting Parisian scenes.

Museums and Galleries including those in Switzerland continued to exhibit his work and some of his paintings hang there permanently as a testament to Sicards’ rightful place as a part of 1920’s Paris history.