Idbury Prints: An online gallery of original fine art prints

EDOUARD PIGNON (French / 1905-1993)

Édouard Pignon was a close friend of Picasso, and was influenced by both Picasso and Matisse. Pignon was born in Bully-les-Mines in the Pas-de-Calais, the son of a miner. Édouard Pignon worked as a miner and in various factories, before taking work in the studio of the lithographic printer (and Cubist printmaker) Georges Dayez in 1935. Édouard Pignon himself became a master lithographer, and as a printmaker worked mostly in this medium until 1960, when he was encouraged by the Crommelynck brothers to learn first copper engraving and then etching. Certain themes recur in the art of Édouard Pignon: Ostend, its boats and its miners; olive trees; wine harvests; cock fights; nudes. Pignon took an art course by correspondence in 1922 while still working in the mines, and kept painting for a decade before exhibiting his first work at the Salon des Indépendants in 1932. Édouard Pignon was married to the writer and art critic Hélène Parmelin. See: Dorival & Ferrier, Pignon, 1966; Bruzeau, Ferrier & Parmelin, Pignon, 1981; Parmelet, Edouard Pignon, 1987; Bouchet, Edouard Pignon, 2004.