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DANIEL GLORIA
Another painter who tended to obliterate the face to facilitate the movement was Daniel Gloria who joined the Gleizes group in Lyon after the war.(8)
(8) See Mélanie Grassi: Daniel Gloria - Entre nature et abstraction, Rochetoirin, 2011
Most of his work was done after Gleizes had died. He himself died in 1989 and I was lucky to have been able to meet him shortly beforehand, I think probably in 1988, with the art collector and historian André Dubois. He was one of those people it was lovely to be with even if we didn't say very much.
He was on the Christian side of the Christian/Guénon divide and he had a number of church commissions. He was particularly known for his work in mosaic.
This crucifixion again illustrates the faceless approach
But I find myself preferring this:
Here, although it is still clearly a crucifixion, the figuration is almost suppressed altogether. Gleizes sometimes said that non-figurative art was higher as contemplative art than figurative art. There was always something of the iconoclast in him.(9)
(9) Gleizes regarded the Council of Frankfurt of 794 as having laid the theological foundations for the Romanesque art he admired so much. The Council was held in opposition to the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicaea held in 787 which authorised the veneration of icons. This has created a problem for me as an admirer of Gleizes who is also an Orthodox Christian who venerates icons. I have written on the subject in Peter Brooke: 'The Council of Frankfurt and the Seventh Ecumenical Council', The Beauty of God's presence in the Fathers, Proceedings of the Eighth International Patristics Conference, Maynooth, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2014.
This is one of Gleizes's non-figurative paintings that I know well. It is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon but it used to be part of the collection of André Dubois and I often stayed overnight with André, sleeping on the sofa in his living room. I would wake up to this:
