Jean-Pierre SCHMID dit LERMITE (Le Locle, 1920 - 1977) - Lot 122

Jean-Pierre SCHMID dit LERMITE (Le Locle, 1920 - 1977) Venascle (Haute-Provence), 1971 Lithograph on paper signed and dated lower right, no. 30/50 40 x 80 cm Provenance: Pierre Bichet Collection The artist had a second home in Venascle. "The Swiss painter Lermite, who nested just across the border from my house, was also a regular visitor to my studio. I had introduced him to lithography, and his work lent itself well to this discipline: nobody knew better than he how to play with grays blossoming in subtle gradations" (Pierre Bichet in: Précis de lithographie, un inventaire de paysages, ed. Barthélémy, 1987). "Our first meeting took place in 1956 or 1957 at the Salon des Annonciades, which I organized with a few friends. It was the beginning of a friendship without clouds. We were both Jura painters, close neighbors despite the border line, so close that I sometimes visited him at Les Bayards on foot from my studio in Pontarlier. What's more, without intending to, we shared the same source of inspiration: the Jura mountain range and its somewhat forgotten highlands." (Pierre Bichet, Lermite et la lithographie, Cahiers Lermite, 1980)