Denise Mannoni artwork • painting • previously for sale La forêt

The self-taught Denise Mannoni spent her childhood in Martinique. From an early age she drew and watercoloured and from her twenties she also worked with oil paint, influenced by the paintings of Gauguin, Van Gogh and Rouault, which she knew from reproductions. In 1948 the painter settled in Paris, where she initially had to get used to the subdued light and gloomy colours of the North. During that period she was mainly involved with ceramics. Gradually, however, she started painting again, in a style that was somewhere between abstract and figurative. Mannoni was one of the regular painters of the Parisian gallery Michel Boutin, then of Valerie Schmidt in the Rue Mazarine.