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Biography
Paul-Alexis Deschmacker was born in 1889 in Roubaix.
He took classes in drawing and painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lille. At 25, he teaches at the School of Arts and Industries of Roubaix. He perfects his technique under the guidance of Fernand Cormon at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He will stay there for two years. Declared unfit for service, he will return to Roubaix until the end of the war. He will give classes at the National School of Textiles and Arts of Roubaix where his Parisian experience will allow him to bring modernity to the traditional motifs then in progress. Back in Paris, he exhibits at the Allard Gallery in 1924. He is then a remarkable portraitist. From 1927, he begins to exhibit regularly at the Salon d'Automne and Salon des Tuileries. This period between the two wars will see him acquire a sound reputation as a painter whose symbolism where we find the influence of Odilon Redon the dispute with a classicism in phase with the Art Deco style then at its peak . The mythological characters populate his paintings. The influence of the Nabis and Maurice Denis is also felt in his work. Later, he will synthesize it through large compositions inspired by the Renaissance, in broad open landscapes.
After the war, he teaches at the School of Applied Arts in Paris and La Grande Chaumiere while exhibiting regularly at Salons.
He died in Roubaix in 1973. The museum of Roubaix will organize a retrospective of his work from May 3 to June 8, 1986. His works are kept at the Museum of the Pool of Roubaix (The Great Blue Mermaid, see on this page), in the Louvre , at the Cantini Museum in Marseille and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg.
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