Albert Decaris French | 1901 - 1988Albert Décris is a French painter, engraver, fresco artist, decorator and illustrator born May 6, 1901 in Sotteville-lès-Rouen. Very gifted for drawing from his earliest years, Decaris waited for Lage to integrate the Fine Arts by obtaining the diploma of the Estienne school, specializing in engraving, under the aegis of the engraver Antoine Dezarrois. He enters the Beaux-Arts without difficulty as soon as he can pass the competition and at 18 becomes First Grand Prix of Rome for engraving, with a work entitled Eve before the sin. The years he spent at the Villa Medici marked his inspiration, Mediterranean subjects, Roman light, references to the Italian Renaissance being part of his work until his last paintings. His desire to integrate Art into all aspects of human life will give his career a special boost. Easel painting and large chisel engravings will always remain his favorite media, but he adds a wide range of artistic activities to them. He devotes great attention to the book, beginning in 1928 with a Combourg de Chateaubriand and then continuing to illustrate works chosen to allow him to express excess and flamboyance (The trophies of Heredia, the Iliad, The Tragedies of Aeschylus, etc. .). He is just as interested in the decorations of cities (mural fresco in New York) as in the decorations of dwellings (Chalet of Jean Walter in Megève) or in official architecture (decor of the town hall of Vesoul ). Daily life also inspires him: Decaris is one of the most popular engravers in the postal services and will produce more than 500 stamps, including a Marianne. Official painter of the French Navy in the early sixties, he does not limit himself to painting his Norman shores, but gives luminous representations of the seas of the Antilles or the Caribbean. He became president of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1960. Decaris died in Paris in 1988