New for November 2021

November 1, 2021

New for November 2021

The season of Advent begins in three weeks, and I have selected a trio of images by contemporary French artists from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection for November illustrating the Annunciation, the "prequel" to the Christmas story, when the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to tell her she had been chosen to be the mother of the Messiah. In an oil on canvas painting (left), Charles Plessard depicts the event in soft pastel tones in an Italianate garden much in the manner of Maurice Denis, his mentor in the Ateliers d'Art Sacre movement, founded in the aftermath of World War I to create a new kind of religious art responsive to contemporary culture.  Michel Ciry shows the divine-human encounter as night falls on a walled-in forest in an austerely expressionist style typical of his etchings from the 1950s. The last new artwork comes from the unknown printmaker, Henriette de Chazelles, a tinted woodcut with a simple, stylized composition, reflecting the early 20th century revival in France of this graphic art form. These three new French contributions to the Collection can be found on The Annunciation page of The Coming of Christ gallery of The Life of Christ section. (John Kohan)