Renowned painter and engraver Gilles Sacksick passed away in mid-October at the age of 83, leaving behind a luminous and deeply sensitive body of work that was profoundly influenced by the Lot region of France, where he lived and drew much of his inspiration. For nearly 80 years of his life, Sacksick held either a pencil or paintbrush in his hand, dedicating himself to his artistic craft.
Sacksick first discovered the Lot region during a reunion with his friend, the famous photographer Robert Doisneau. He initially settled with his family in Loubressac in 1970, then moved to Végennes, near Vayrac, in 1989. As a recognized painter, his works were exhibited internationally in prestigious venues including Paris, London, Bath, New York, Tokyo, Osaka, the Goya Museum in Castres, and the Veterinary School of Maisons-Alfort.
During his time in the Lot, Sacksick became acquainted with the Delbos couple, the remarkable creators of the Casino de Saint-Céré. This venue became famous for hosting major names in French music and for the quality of exhibitions they organized. His artistic journey would take him through various locations including Carennac, Martel, Floirac, Loubressac, Vayrac, Les Quatre-Route-du-Lot, and Saint-Michel-de-Bannières.
In a self-portrait written for his 1992 monograph, Sacksick reflected on his artistic beginnings: "My first studio was my mother's kitchen. As far back as my memories go – and those of my mother! – I draw. Drawing wasn't considered something notable, but like one of those particularities that nature grants to each child: some fall asleep with difficulty, others walk late. I wandered in drawing, without guide, without compass, without landmarks, in the same freedom – I had only that within the family home – that given to a child playing in the sand."
He described how, like many children, he learned to write before he could read by tirelessly copying the alphabets of his older sisters. "I drew everything: the life that surrounded me, the stories I was told. I tried to copy the vignettes from school books, post office calendars, as well as illustrations from the rare newspapers that came through our house," he recalled.
Sacksick's relationship with formal education was complex. While he never felt bored in elementary school, finding learning easy and enjoyable, high school presented a different challenge. "At high school, I discovered a world that prefigured well, alas, the large housing complexes of all kinds that our century has made a specialty. There were ten or eleven sixth-grade classes and we were forty or forty-five students per class. From the start, I hated this regimentation," he wrote. This led to his gradual disinterest in academic studies and his first encounter with what he called "compact, pompous, gray boredom."
However, at age 12, while struggling in sixth grade, Sacksick made a life-changing discovery when he found the Louvre Museum on his own. "It was a revelation: I left the Museum with the eyes that Moses must have had coming down from Mount Sinai. I looked at everything. Without knowing it, I was starving and consequently I loved everything. This deluge of sculpted and painted forms filled me with a joy, a jubilation that I cannot describe," he reminisced. Style or period conflicts were completely foreign to him – loving Cimabue and Rembrandt simultaneously, or Ingres and Delacroix, or Rubens and Vermeer's Lacemaker caused him no embarrassment whatsoever.
Thursday and Sunday mornings were devoted to the Louvre, while afternoons were spent in what he described as "dubious company" that helped him understand certain movements of his body to meet girls – this during an era when a sort of apartheid separated male and female students. He considered this "real work, but also as exhilarating as drawing, as necessary and pure as the latter."
Sacksick's academic career ended dramatically when he was permanently expelled from high school during his junior year for indiscipline, spectacularly failing his baccalaureate exam. However, he admitted this failure contained "a good part of calculation." For two or three years, wanting to become a painter and only a painter, he had decided to force destiny – specifically his mother – by sabotaging his studies so irreparably that, weary of the struggle, she would allow him to devote himself to studying and practicing drawing.
He painted in oil for the first time between ages 14 and 15, pinning a piece of cloth to the hallway wall and using Lesieur cooking oil as a diluent due to his great naivety. The work was a copy of a Rembrandt self-portrait, which he still possessed years later.
Sacksick's painting style was distinctive and unconventional. While his pictorial themes could be considered classical – nudes, portraits, still lifes, landscapes, animals – his treatment and painting method were far from traditional. He would sprinkle and seed his canvases with a cloud of colors, with natural pigments flying throughout his studio. He nicknamed himself, with a touch of irony, the "coal merchant of colors" because his hair, clothes, and hands were so impregnated with them.
His creative process was spontaneous and meditative. The theme of a canvas was invented in the moment, beginning with dreamy meditation before leaping into the heart of painting, with color spots thrown down that would form into drawing. He used no traced outlines or pencil, privileging space and imprinting his spontaneity. His only guide was a brush soaked with water and glue, a support that collected pigments thrown like "sorcerer's powder." As he commented, "Every artist constantly replays, each time in his own way, the entire history of painting."
Sacksick's eye developed sensitive and acute knowledge of nuances and tones. A ray of sunlight on a beam or the clarity of a room would unfold into an infinite palette of shades. This knowledge fed his art of portraiture, a discipline he particularly loved and which earned him the Grand Prix de Portrait Paul-Louis Weiller in 1979. He often explained how his painting allowed him to "express the inexpressible of his feelings, his beliefs, his being so deep that words were vain."
Sacksick leaves behind his wife Isabelle, their two children Thomas and Charlotte, and their extended family. His legacy continues through his luminous works that captured the essence of the Lot region and reflected his deep sensitivity to the world around him.
