Odette Pauvert. Painting as an ambition in the time of Art Deco

Painter “in the time of Art Deco”, Odette Pauvert is completely at ease at La Piscine, an emblematic monument of the period, built by architect Albert Baert between 1927 and 1932. A tribute conceived on the occasion of the centenary of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, the famous springboard for the Art Deco style celebrated everywhere in this anniversary year, but also, and above all, of the centenary of the artist’s Prix de Rome (ill. 1), as she was the first female laureate in painting, fourteen years after Lucienne Heuvelmans in sculpture.

Thus, she continues in the line of the constellation of female artists brought back into the spotlight by the Roubaix museum over decades, under the guidance of its director, and quasi-founder, Bruno Gaudichon, now retired (see the news item of 2/5/24). Odette Pauvert is all the more attached to him, as he, along with Blandine Chavanne, initiated the first major monographic exhibition dedicated to her at the Musée Sainte-Croix in Poitiers in 1986, which featured the large Psyché Awakening on the Mountain now loaned here. Although the artist remains largely unknown forty years later, the major retrospective desired by La Piscine, under the curatorship of Adèle Taillefait, curator in charge of the fine arts collections, marks a new stage in her rehabilitation, which a future catalogue raisonné undertaken by Thibaut Gemignani, the artist’s grandson, is expected to complete.

It is necessary to acknowledge here the importance of the role played by Odette Pauvert’s…