Hervé Dubreil
Critics

"His painting is at the same time rich and rigorous, near Cezanne’s one by the structure of very dominated sensitivity of the light expressed by the taints, often cold in landscapes and faces, and warm in still lives. They are remarkably sure, discreetly impressionist by the poetic vibration of values, of a great classical spirit in the stability of composition and interiorization of the drawing. It is an art of strong range, without aggressiveness, of a natural distinction, which communicates a natural and human emotion, deeply convincing."

Les Nouvelles Littéraires
(october 1973)

 

 

"Dubreil’s canvas have a delicacy which translates a very subtle sensitivity, enemy of the violences of expression. They readily take the ways which lead to poetry or fairyhood, or even to the neighbourhood of informality. A painting which those who are sensitive to the nuance, the suggestion, subtlety and charm will particularly like."

B. SAINT-AIGNAN. "L’amateur d’art"
(march, 24th 1977)

Exhibition : Galerie d’art ROR VOLMAR, Paris.
(March 1977)

 

It is "hardly touched" in broad zones generally wrapping the subject, who appears in a clean light of a great smoothness. Hervé DUBREIL needs little to say much, to go beyond brutal appearance, to join a climate entirely made of poetry.

Jean CHABANON. « Le Peintre » (October, 15th 1978)

Exhibition : Galerie d’art ROR VOLMAR, Paris.
(October 1978)

 

There are in fact two ways of conceiving Hervé DUBREIL's painting. Admittedly, he always works by more or less widened spots of color, more or less fuzzy, which sometimes lets one think of a form of modern impressionism ; but he also happens to split up space into two or three zones, and the color then becomes light. Thus, he helps himself with color, to handle space in his own way, because diffuse light moves objects away or brings them closer. Thus he manages to carry out a new balance between his subject and the surrounding universe.

Dominique MIRAS-ARNOULT. "Les nouvelles affiches de Marseille"

Exhibition : Galerie DU PALAIS, Marseille.
(January 1981)

 

…Because Hervé DUBREIL knows how to say the essence of what his glance tames in his memory. A landscape under a tender light as a caress, an interior with a powdered atmosphere or a composition of objects in his space vision. Everything in DUBREIL's work is organized in a very pure way, from a warmness to a coldness of taints that nothing disturbs, as one finds everywhere this precious range of sensitivity and a desire to share the intense emotion of a moment of happiness.

C.B. « La Provence » (1986)

Exhibition « Galerie LE PONANT » Marseille,
(April 1996)

 

Dubreil recreates the lower part of things, using an unusual and very sophisticated ratio of colors.
Broken with techniques, disregarding details, he alternates smooth and grained matters in large aplats, associating rhythmic rigour and great freedom. "I try to release myself from the surface of the subject, to perceive the "interior", to express the "inside" of things, to retain only the essence of it".

Robert Inard d'Argence "Nice Matin"
(June, 12th 1996).

And this essence is that he has met in Provence. Dubreil’s characters appear clothed with their aura, the spirit of these ancesters who have made this country as hard as mysterious, as dark as luminous, which can give back to those who know how to look at it the light, the heat and the colors of a sun that the artist has capted. He is not a Provencal, but he is a poet. His painting does not make tourism, it is a quest of absolute purity, of that which leads towards this invisible thing that the great colors are.

Robert Inard d'Argence - "Nice Matin"
(December, 26th 1995)

 

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