Camille Hilaire

Biography of Camille Hilaire

Camille Hilaire was born on August 2, 1916, in Metz, where he spent his youth and completed his studies.

Starting from 1930, initially out of taste, he began to draw and became passionate about Dürer.

From the National School of Fine Arts where he enrolled as a student in 1941 (and where he met Lhote and Villon), to the platforms of the same school where he taught from 1958, Hilaire remained a craftsman of his art.

However, it was in 1943 that he exhibited at the Autumn Salon, before the fifties propelled him across Europe and then the rest of the world, where his work was not only recognized but celebrated.

At his death in 2004, not only had his work made him one of the masters of French pictorial art, but since then his value has continued to rise.

A painter of great maturity, he managed to combine the poetry of exceptionally exceptional light work with a technical rigor and a sense of canvas organization that were out of the ordinary.

(c) Natacha PELLETIER for PASSION ESTAMPES