Yvon Pissarro

Yvon Pissarro – b. 1937, as the son of Paulémile and grandson of Camille Pissarro. His independent spirit and readiness to criticise made him at a very early age, an out-and-out rebel who did not want to obey the orders of his family. Concerned for his future, his parents wanted to steer him towards a stable, safe career and although he had no definite plans, this prospect did not fill him with much enthusiasm. It was during adolescence, that he decided to enter the Académie Julian to study drawing and the history of art. At the same time he left the family home in Normandy. Then he started to attend the Paris City Council evening classes in arts and crafts to develop his skills. His reluctant parents gave him only sparing help, in the hope that he would quickly abandon this path, but he kept himself going with casual short-term jobs. Without really being aware of it, he was preparing for a future that would often be difficult.

During national service he became friendly with the poet James Sacré and on his return to civilian life he spent time at his parents’ home in order to readjust to being free. Using his father’s line engraving press, he printed around fifteen woodcuts for a collection of poems by Sacré, La transparence du Pronom ‘Elle’ (Transparency of the pronoun ’she’).

At that point that he also decided to abandon his burdensome family name, choosing as a pseudonym the name of a hamlet - Vey, where his brother Hugues Claude Pissarro rented a house. After couple of years he was to realise, that Vey is an anagram of the forename Yves, of which Yvon is a diminutive form. Like so many artists before him, Yvon devoted himself to drawing despite the tendency of the age to abandon the techniques of the past that were built around the concept of a craftsman and his skill. He did not mind that for some it was only a sterile repetition of what artists used to do. Yvon knew he was taking a chance in persisting in a rather fatalistic way with this passion. In his keenness to master the skills of the past, and to muster them against the objections of the critics and the works of his contemporaries, he covered large sheets of white paper with pencil drawings.

Having settled in Nice, Yvon joined with others in the south of France who specialised in drawing, in order to mount an exhibition under the leadership of Dany Bloch a curator of the Paris Musée d’Art Moderne.

Ad after leaving Nice, Yvon moved to a village near Montpellier where he continues to dedicate his life to his art.