Guided tour of the “Ange Abrate” exhibition

Angelo Abrate (1900-1985), known as Ange Abrate, is one of the great figures of mountain painting, whose works are preserved by the municipality of Saint-Gervais. Thanks to the loan of a rich collection of paintings by this mountaineer painter, originally from Turin, who lived in Chamonix and then in Sallanches from 1933 onwards, this exhibition traces the artistic career of this self-taught artist. Through a selection of paintings illustrating the Mont Blanc massif, which he explored throughout his life, as well as other Alpine peaks he climbed and the creeks he loved, it presents an original, sincere body of work, full of the joy he felt in depicting the landscapes he cherished.

Through his use of materials, Ange Abrate approaches the avant-garde he observes and admires in the landscapes he paints. Under the snow or the midday sun, at night or at sunrise, his brush or knife sketches the verticality, the slopes, and the play of colors and light that emerge. Throughout his career, presented here through some twenty works and archival documents, he has sought to represent water in all its forms—solid, liquid, gaseous—to capture the nature that surrounds it.