Portrait of the artist's mother - Elisabeth DUJARRIC de LA RIVIÈRE

Title : Portrait of the artist's mother

Artist : Elisabeth DUJARRIC de LA RIVIÈRE (Jouy-en-Josas 1930 – Excideuil 2005)

Technique : Oil on canvas

Dimensions : 171 x 70 cm

Signed on the back

Provenance : Private collection, Périgord

Born in the heart of the Bièvre valley, a few kilometers from Versailles, Elisabeth Dujarric nevertheless comes from two important families, whose origins lie elsewhere. She is the daughter of Marcelle Friedmann, whose parents retained German ties, mainly in Berlin where Adolphe Friedmann is an eminent businessman. On his father's side, the Dujarric de la Rivière have been settled in Périgord for several centuries and their traces can be found in Agonac and Trélissac in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It was in Saint Sulpice d'Excideuil in the north-east of the department that the family settled, at the famous Château de la Rivière from which they adorned their name. Scholars, doctors, scientists, artists, the members of this family will bring some additional letters of nobility to Périgord. Elisabeth's father, an eminent researcher, will be a member of the Academy of Medicine in part because of his discoveries on the Spanish flu. The Périgueux hospital still bears his name today.

In this isolated Périgord residence in the countryside, Elisabeth Dujarric will create a workshop where she will work in the summer, while she lives in Paris to get away from the harsh winters. Within the capital she will be a fervent protector of the city of artists called “La Ruche”, well known to lovers of modern art since some young people without means were able to create their works there, like Modigliani, Soutine , Léger, Laurencin, Zatkine, Dorignac and even Chagall. After courses in Art History at the Sorbonne and visits to the Jullian and Grande Chaumière Academies, in 1957 Elisabeth Dujarric received the prize from the Salon de la Jeune Peinture held at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la city ​​of Paris. This award is part of her first period of work where she developed a style full of materials, with broken perspectives, modified colors and focusing mainly on portraits and still lifes. In the 1960s she changed her style as evidenced by the exhibitions in the Parisian galleries of the time, where the artist painted subjects from everyday life in light colors with atypical framing and compositions.

Elisabeth Dujarric creates several series of full-length characters, on large format canvases. These paintings are studies that serve as his basis for larger compositions, or works of expression in themselves. Here it seems that it is his own mother who is represented in a simple outfit and slippers on her feet. The first underlying plot is strong, almost violent and gives the upper layers a soul.