André Bauchant

André Bauchant
b.1873, Château-Renault, France 
d. 1958, Montoire-sur-le-Loir France

André Bauchant was a self-taught French painter associated with the naïve artists of Willhelm Uhde’s Peintres du Cœur-Sacré. At the age of 14, Bauchant left school to apprentice as a farmer on family land, eventually operating his own nursery. In 1914, he was called to serve in the First World War, where he discovered his natural talent for drawing. Employed as a draftsman, and later a mapmaker and rangefinder, he stated, “I drew the horizons with the same ease as writing a letter.”

Upon his demobilization in 1919, he returned home to find his nursery fallow. Bauchant then relocated with his wife to Auzouer-en-Touraine, finding work on local farms and dedicating himself to a career as a painter. 

In 1921, he exhibited his work at the Salon d’Automne and gained the attention of important cultural figures, such as Le Corbusier, Serge Diagihilev, and Willhelm Uhde. Bauchant’s self-taught nature was celebrated for its ability to transcend the formalism of contemporary modern art. In his landscapes filled with figures and floral still lifes, Bauchant evoked a sense of the primitive through his use of flattened space and unglazed color, reminiscent of medieval frescoes.

His work was included in major exhibitions, such as the 1937 Maîtres Populaires de la Réalité, which traveled to Paris, Zurich, London, and various cities in the US, as well as a 1949 retrospective at Charpentier Gallery. Bauchant continued to paint until 1957 and died the following year.