Stéphane Cara

This mid-century oil painting depicts a mountain landscape featuring the Chaudanne dam in Castellane. Constructed between 1950 and 1953, this dam is situated in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region of southern France.

Stéphane Gilbert Fernand Caracotchian, known as Stéphane Cara, is a French post-Impressionist painter. Of Armenian father and French mother, he was born in Châtenois (Alsace) on July 3, 1901. The son of a prestigious doctor, his family moved to Paris in 1919. He worked for many years as a wine merchant and as an agent for the “Société Anonyme fluviale Trans-Cam” in Bordeaux, before dedicating himself fully to painting.

His initial artistic training was self-taught, his research is personal, with no foreign influence and he later trained with Armand Drouant (1898-1978) and André Lhote (1885-1962) in Paris.

Stéphane Cara worked in solitude for several years. This is perhaps one of the reasons why it is difficult to pin him down to a particular school or personality. For him, each subject is the fruit of a particular inspiration that calls for its own means of expression. Hence the diversity and renewal of Cara's style. By simplifying the motif, the drawing and the colour, he achieves a synthesis of coloured planes in which there seems to be nothing but perfectly ordered indications.

Exhibitions :

1944: Selected in Bordeaux, at the Salon des provinces françaises, finalist for Guyenne at the Musée Galliéra, Paris.

1944: Second Liburnia prize.

1945: First Liburnia prize.

Since 1946: Salon des Indépendants bordelais.

Since 1957, exhibits annually at the Salon de l'Art Libre in Paris.

1959: Second Cezanne prize at the "Trois prix Cézanne" competition in Cannes; 1960: Winner of the Deauville International Grand Prix.

1960: Execution of the stained glass windows for the altar of the Virgin, Église Sainte-Hélène, Nice.

He was the author of a book entitled (in French) “Painting in a Nutshell: or How to Judge a Painting” published in 1959. His sister Anita was the first woman oceanographer in the world.

After travelling extensively, settled in Nice in 1955, where he died) on May 16, 1962, at the age of 60.

Source: Archives de France.

Artist: Stéphane Cara (1901-1962).
Signed in the bottom right corner.
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Condition: Very good condition.
Dimensions: 73 x 60 cm. / 28 ¾ x 23 ½ in.
Frame: Unframed.
Origin: France.