Georges Gaston Arnulf  

Georges Gaston Arnulf is a French painter and engraver born in Monte-Carlo (Monaco) on March 23, 1921 and died on November 19, 1996 in Thillay. It belongs to a very old Niçois family. He obtained in 1950 the first Grand Prize of Rome of intaglio engraving2, and he was commissioned to realize the label of the Castle Mouton Rothschild 1950. The pe...

Georges Gaston Arnulf is a French painter and engraver born in Monte-Carlo (Monaco) on March 23, 1921 and died on November 19, 1996 in Thillay. It belongs to a very old Niçois family. He obtained in 1950 the first Grand Prize of Rome of intaglio engraving2, and he was commissioned to realize the label of the Castle Mouton Rothschild 1950. The pensioner in Rome for three and a half years, the journey and grave to the chisel illustration D A luxury edition of the sonnets of Shakespeare French version of François-Victor Hugo, prefaced by André Maurois, published by Henri Javal, 1954.

Returning to Paris in 1955, he realized the layout and illustration with the chisel and aquatint of a book of poems by Philippe de Rothschild, Éclos à l'aube. In 1956 he left for Lebanon as artistic and technical adviser of the Catholic Printing Office of Beirut, during which period he made various stays in Egypt and Asia Minor. In 1957, he signed a contract as artistic advisor attached to the publications department of the Ministry of Culture in Colombia.

He is also responsible for the design and construction of 20 stained-glass windows at the colonial church "San Francisco" in Bogotà. It is well executed according to the traditional technique with the help of a master glassmaker. He will still execute the frescoes of the Hotel Tonchalà in Cucuta and will direct the restoration of 200 paintings belonging to the various churches of the Colombian colonial era. He later became artistic director of the Seguros Colombia company and of the Bank of Construction and Development in Bogotà.

Attracted by the immensity and diversity of the Colombian landscapes, he visits the Llanos, the Amazon and the remotest regions of Magdalena and Huila: San Augustin and Tierradentro, vast archaeological areas, hence the rapper of many sketches of Monumental sculptures and frescoes of the necropolis, which complement those taken at the National Museum and the Museum of Gold of Bogota.

This long work is at the origin of the collection "Estampes precolombiennes", to which it is dedicated as soon as it returned to France in 1966, and whose first volume which appeared in April 1967 is presented at the Galerie-Librairie by Gérard Mourgue at Paris 5, the same year, to relax the meticulous work of engraving, he realizes a fresco in the patio of the Villa Joya of M. Alexandre Reza in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat. He was appointed professor of drawing at the National School of Decorative Arts in Nice, where he was until 1968, and then obtained a post in charge of courses "Forms and Graphics" - at the Faculty of Vincennes in 1969.

He had his bought press transported before his departure to the Villa Medicis and stowed at his parents' house in the workshop of his new house at Le Thillay. It is there that his terrible disease of the bone marrow appears. He is hospitalized during the month, in reaction to suffering and immobility, so it is with the amount of sketches at the bic tip that have been so many studies for his future engravings.