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Louis Bissinger
(1899-1972)
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Born in Lyon, France, Louis Bissinger would become a great French landscape painter. Specializing in particular in sunrises and sunsets, Bissinger painted in the Impressionistic style.
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Soleil Au
Couchant
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Bissinger began to study music at the age of 15 at the Academy of Music in Lyon, learning to play the cello. His artistic career didn’t begin until 1923 when he married his wife Yvette. Bissinger was still playing in an orchestra during this time, as well as traveling to different regions of France to find new landscapes to paint.
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Landscape
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In 1943, Bissinger is stopped in the streets of Garibaldi and sent to the concentration camp Buckenwald. Surprisingly, he survives and is even able to paint scenes of the death camps on boards and panels of wood while in captivity. Before and after his captivity, Bissinger was known to use the pseudonym Regis Berard on his work, or would often not sign them at all.
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Landscape
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After his release in 1945, Bissinger returned to Lyon to find his workshop destroyed. Like so many artists that survived World War
II in Europe, many of his works were certainly stolen or destroyed due to German occupation. To recover, he opened a small shop of antiquities in Lyon where he sold his paintings depicting life in Buckenwald.
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Landscape
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Throughout the rest of his life, Bissinger would expose his work frequently, usually choosing to only show at high profile Parisian galleries and salons. He became a highly decorated artist after the war and even received Military decoration, the Military Cross aver Palmes and the Medal of Resistance and the Legion of Honor in 1970.
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House in Lyon
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While some art critics have compared Bissinger to fellow landscape painter Camille Corot, Bissinger still held his own in the art world and his art is still highly collectible today. One may never know what work of his still exists after the war, but this unfortunate pillage of his work could mean a great find for someone today.
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Close to Grenoble watercolor
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Think that you may own a piece of work by this great artist? We authenticate, appraise and research all works by Louis Bissinger.
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