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Biography of Paul Guy
Gantner
Gantner was born in 1948 in
Seoul, South Korea. He was instantaneously attracted to color and form. By the
age of 12
he was attempting to recreate his universe through the medium of paint.
Gantner is primarily a self-taught artist. His
passion for the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists was responsible for
his move to France. This allowed him
to freely study their work and to explore their universe. The majority of
Gantner's paintings are set in Provence and the Midi.
The artist's fascination with quaint mountain villages with their narrow,
winding streets becomes a perfect vehicle for the true
subject of his work's solitude. Gantner's paintings are visual records of
absence. This theme is reinforced through the
artist's use of confined luminous and shadowed spaces that are defined and
contained by vertical walls of stone. Even
when the painting is not of a narrow village street, solitude and absence are
still present. Trained in the Impressionist vein,
Gantner has resolved the age-old Poussiniste-Rubeniste conflict by combining
the strengths and qualities of line with color.
This is apparent in Gantner's return to Giverny to repaint Monet's
Japanese bridge and waterlilies. The spontaneous quality
that defined the impressionism of Monet has given way to a painted drawing
that is a controlled application of color structured
within a strong linear composition.
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