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Mid century oil Painting - portrait of a woman with blonde hair by Michel-Marie Poulain
A wonderful portrait by the famous French painter and transgender performer Michel-Marie Poulian. Created in her typical distinctive style with use of vibrant colours, intricate patterns and expressive brushwork this is a visually striking and engaging work of art that has a sense of immediacy to it. Poulain's work has been exhibited in prestigious galleries and art shows, gaining recognition and acclaim from art critics and institutions and her work continues to appreciate.
History ~ Michel-Marie Poulain b. 5 December 1906, (Nogent-sur-Marne) d. 9 February 1991,(Mandelieu-la-Napoule).
Born male but wearing dresses from an early age Michel-Marie was mocked and bullied at school but stood her own ground. In 1926, at the age of twenty she cut her long blonde curls for the first time and performed military service with the French dragoons cavalry. Returning to civilian life Poulain worked in female guise as a dress designer and model. There followed a period when she performed as an acrobat at the Cirque d’hiver and worked with trapeze artists. Then followed a career as a travesti cabaret act, using the name ‘Micky’. At this time Poulain met a young female dancer called Solange and they had a daughter together.
In the early 1930s, Poulain had met the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin, where she was performing, at this time she was happy in her body state. However by 1933, (when Hirschfeld had fled from the Nazis to Paris) Poulain realised she had “an insurmountable need to be a woman”. But having considered the complexities of operating at that time she declined Hirschfeld’s offer of surgery.
Throughout this period Poulain followed her passion as a self-taught painter and from 1931 onwards began to exhibit regularly in the many independent salons of Paris, with her work being regularly shown at Montmarte galleries and on the Left Bank. Towards the end of the 1930s she opened a combined art gallery and cabaret venue near the Arc de Triomphe.
This was a wonderfully creative period for Poulain but shortlived, with the declaration of war in 1939 Poulain once again joined the dragoons, as a non-commissioned officer. He was captured by the Germans and imprisoned with other POWs. He returned to his performing roots and put on shows for fellow prisoners, all of whom were grateful for the entertainment and escapism this allowed them.
Somehow, in 1941, Poulain escaped from the prison and from Poland managed to return to France. With false papers she returned to Paris, which by this time was occupied by the Germans. It was at this time that Poulain abandoned the music hall and began to devote herself to painting.
After the war, in 1946 Poulain did undergo several surgical procedures to change her sex. It is unclear as to whether Poulain and Solange continued to live as a married couple.
At the peak of her success as a painter in the late 1940s and 1950s, Poulain exhibited as far afield as Stockholm, Madrid, New York and Rio de Janeiro, and opened her own exhibition gallery in Cannes. Success allowed Poulain to live and work in Èze on the French Riviera, where she had an atelier, whilst also keeping a property in Paris. She also practiced the art of stained glass, creating windows and mural frescoes for churches and abbeys.
Poulain’s painting style was reviewed by Renate Treydel - “The long-term process of finding her gender identity is reflected in her art and leads to a particularly subtle figurative painting style characterized by opposites. Powerful, sketchy, fleeting lines are paired with a gentle, soft brushwork, and a certain severity is mitigated by figures radiating feminine grace. Poulain paints very lively, strongly moving depictions in mostly bold colours, sometimes in bright colours based on Fauvist models. Black contoured pictorial elements and roughly hatched backgrounds lead to comparison with paintings by Bernard Buffet . . .”
Poulain said of her own work - "What I'm looking for is the sense of movement. I want my dancers to dance, my sailors to sway, the leaves of the trees to quiver in the wind. I strive to discover new aesthetic rules so that others can work in this direction, after me."
Poulain’s transgender personality was strongly incorporated into her painting style and she actively courted publicity. Inevitably this led to detractors, one critic, Georges Pillement, in 1948 wrote disparagingly that she had no originality, other than that of a transgender personality and that her paintings were created to please a commercial market. Overall however Poulain was well regarded and received within the artistic world of the time.
Her work has been on public display at:- Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris. Musée Renoir de Cagnes-sur-Mer Société Muséale Albert-Figuiera, Èze. French Embassy, Managua.
Stills ~ Number 1 – Poulain in uniform (source: gallica.bnf.fr/BnF). Number 2 – Jean Cocteau and Poulain at the theatre in Paris, c. 1951 (source: gallica.bnf.fr/BnF). Number 3 – Poulain in her atelier, c. 1951 (source: gallica.bnf.fr/BnF).
Reference ~ 1). Renate Treydel in the Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon 2). Wikipedia
