Alfred MANESSIER (1911-1993). Composition. Gouache on paper signed and dated 1958 lower center right. Height : 38 cm. 38 cm - Width: 53 cm Provenance: - Marlborough Gallery of New-York. - Galerie des Modernes. This work is in the archives of Mrs Christine Manessier for the catalogue raisonné of the work of Alfred Manessier in preparation. Alfred Manessier received an academic education at the École des Beaux-Arts in Amiens before meeting the abstract painters of the Nouvelle École de Paris in 1935. During the occupation, he participated in 1941 in the Manifesto of Lyrical Abstraction exhibition "Twenty young painters in the French tradition" alongside Estève, Charles Lapicque, Pignon and Gustave Singier. All of them claim to be colourful abstractionists. For Manessier, colour means light, in the tradition of the art of stained glass which occupies a large part of his work. He creates an emotional landscape, rendered by a play of forms and colours that transcribe feelings. Thus the painter wishes his "paintings to be testimonies of something experienced by the heart and not an imitation of things seen by the eyes".