French painter associated with the School of Paris (“l’École de Paris”), the Cubism-Expressionist style of whose work eventually reached the limit of non-figuration.
He settled permanently in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1928 and had his first solo exhibition in 1930. In 1935 he produced the sets and costumes for the ballet La Pantoufle de Vair for the Opéra-Comique, to music by his friend Marcel Delannoy, and a panel, L’Industrie, for the French Pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Brussels.
In 1938, Chastel painted Pax Genitrix, an allegory of Peace 12 m high by 8 m wide, one of the four panels offered by France to the “Société des Nations” for the Great Assembly Hall, in Geneva, also decorated by Maurice Denis, Ker-Xavier Roussel and Édouard Vuillard. He met the poet Jean Lescure with whom he had long discussions encouraging him to reconsider his ideas and his painting then went through an expressionist phase.
In 1955, Chastel created the sets for the ballet Les Noces Fantastiques, music by Marcel Delannoy, for the Paris Opera, and he designed the costumes and sets for La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu by Jean Giraudoux. A few summers spent on the island of Houat, in 1954, 1955 and 1956, influenced his work and he turning towards creating landscapes.
Chastel received the National Arts Prize in 1961. From 1963 to 1968 he was professor-director of the workshop at the National School of Fine Arts. Important retrospectives of his work were staged in 1962 and 1968.
Roger Chastel died on 12 July 1981 at age 84 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. An auction of 447 works from his studio took place on 2 December 2007.
Link to Wikipedia biography