Henri Morez

HENRI MOREZ (Romania, 1922-Paris, 2017).
Untitled.
Oil on canvas.
Presents restorations on the pictorial surface and needs cleaning.
Measurements: 65 x 92 cm.
Henri Morez, pseudonym of Henri Schinezer or Hers Askenasi, was a French painter and press cartoonist.He was born into a very poor Yiddish-speaking Jewish family. Fleeing persecution, the family emigrated to Paris.
At a very young age, he was discovered by Emmanuel Mané-Katz (1894-1962), also a native of Eastern Europe. In his workshop in rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, he learned the trade. And thanks to his mediation, he was accepted by the jury of the 1938 Salon d'Automne at the Palais de Chaillot. He was the youngest of the exhibitors.
In 1945, he discovered his vocation for drawing and began to collaborate, on a voluntary basis, in Jeune Combat, a meeting place for Jewish youth and immigrant labor, which emerged from the Resistance, and the following year he began his professional career as a press illustrator. He worked for the magazine Droit et Liberté, a newspaper distributed by the Union of Jews for Resistance and Mutual Aid. Clandestine during the war, the publication comes to light after the Liberation. First of all, it was put at the service of the Communist Party press: La Vie ouvrière (at the time, the most important weekly in France) and L'Humanité Dimanche. Krokodil, the Soviet satirical newspaper, even reproduced one of his drawings.
At the end of the 1960s, he returned to painting. His painting reveals his first profession. It is direct, simple, sober, and the colors are pastel tones. He simplifies the figures, geometricizes them or turns them into silhouettes of Chinese shadows, and manages to make a place for himself in the Parisian world as a painter. For his first major exhibition of paintings in 1968, he is welcomed by Katia Granoff, who had previously worked in recognition of Chagall, Soutine, Utrillo or Dufy.
From his studio in rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, which was that of Mané-Katz and Othon Friesz, he continues his work, as plastic as interior.