Roland Coudon: Zurich
Roland Coudon: Zurich, townscape, oil on canvas, including a canal or river. Superb view of this beautiful city. Art 19.75 x 24, framed 25.5 x 29.5. Please see all photos, frame has some dings.
Roland Coudon was a painter, draftsman, engraver and poster designer (1897-1954). Trained at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, he first became famous for his portraits, many of them for Marshal Pétain. In 1937, he won a gold medal for the decoration of two pavilions at the Paris exhibition (PC, 1944). He produced many posters for the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), including the one entitled "I keep the promises ...", drawn more than three million copies for the most important campaign of the Occupation. His posters for the cinema, including that for the movie King Kong in 1933 (Artnet, 2015), or that of Fire Mon Oncle !, a great film by Laurel and Hardy (Bibliothèques de Chartres, 2009), earned him a great reputation. After the war, he was treated in Montana and discovered Valais and Switzerland (PC, 1944). Passionately fond of the country, he paints many views of Valais and Old Geneva, which, according to him, inspires him even more than Montmartre, who was one of his favorite subjects (Berchet, 1944). . He was also the author, in 1951, of a stained glass project made by glass brothers Charles and Jacques Wasem and posed at Belle-Idée Psychiatric Hospital in Chêne-Bourg (GE). It is unclear whether the artist has had other opportunities to work in the stained glass area during the rest of his career, on which we have very little information outside his Swiss period.
