Andre Lhote was born on July 5, 1885 in Bordeaux. As a youth, he was an apprentice to a decorative sculptor and studied sculpture at the Eçole des Beaux-Arts. He acquired his sense of grandeur and the monumentality which characterizes his figures from the Gothic and Baroque. He avidly read Delacroix’s Journal and Baudelaire’s Curiosities Esthetiques. He observed the Impressionists, admired Gauguin, and copied Delacroix and Rubens in the museum. His capacity for diligent work was matched by his intelligence and his ever growing intellectuality.

  In 1906, Lhote sent a painting, La Grappe, based on Gothic constructions, to the Salon d’Automne but it was refused. However, for the next four years, at the suggestion of his friend Roualt, he developed the dramatic aspect of his work, and in 1910, the paintings he sent to the Salon d’Automne and Independants were so well received, that the Valerie Druet gave him his first one man show in Paris. Maurice Denis promptly bought one but not without caviling – he deplored Lhote’s “dangerous” tendency towards Cubism.

  At this time, Lhote wrote, “I took part in the first Cubist show, rue Tronchet, and in the first Section d’Or, declining, however, to join any group, a grave blunder, which has deprived me of the honor of being represented in Apollinaire’s book on Cubism, though he has spoken very warmly of my first pictures. The Gothic Sculptors had given me a love for simple planes and geometricised drawing and prepared me quite naturally for the influence of Braque and Picasso. I can claim no originality therefore, except in one point: I have never painted a guitar or a tobacco package – a detail more important than it seems. I have always been interested in landscape and the human figure, even the nude, in defiance of both Cubist and Futurist excommunication.” This statement encompasses Lhote’s independence of thought and practice and demonstrates his lifelong stand, midway between Realism and Cubism. In this respect, he is the Cubist-intellectual painter par excellence. In his paintings, one feels the presence of the subtle, logical analyst, who step-by-step, achieves his objectives with the clearest precision in composition and color.

In 1918, Lhote lectured in many Academies and addressed conferences on art in Europe, Egypt and Rio de Janeiro. His eloquence and his writing, apparent in numerous books and La Revue Francaise, equaled his artistry. Students came from every continent to his art school in the rue d’Odessa in Paris, attracted by the aura of the great master-teacher of his time.

Andre Lhote enjoys a world-wide representation in private collections and important museums. Since 1958, there have been notable retrospective exhibitions at the Musee National d’Art Morderne in Paris, the Musee Municipal in Metz, the Musee Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, in Limoges and Lyon.

Bio Excerpt translated from the French text : E. Benezit. Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculptreurs, Dessinatuers et Graveurs; Paris : Grund, 1999.pp.629-630