Haverford College News

Acclaimed French painter Françoise André will exhibit 10 of her works at Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Oct. 31-Dec. 7, 2003.

Critics have praised André as a “rare artist of the world today, a painter who not only feels but thinks” (The Villager) and “a craftsman of an assurance and subtlety…intensely involved in the mystery and anguish of the human condition” (Toronto Daily Star). The Haverford exhibit includes the paintings De l’Amour, Hand-Hand-Made, and Self-Portrait with Canvas and Rags II.

André was born in Vendie, France, to a Franco-Belgian family; her great-grandfather was the admired collector Alphonse Willems and her maternal grandfather was composer Florent Schmitt. She was educated at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Belgium, and the Roger Institut voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerpen, Belgium, and received a scholarship from the French government to study with expressionist artist Marcel Gromaire at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. She moved to North America in 1951 and spent 12 years in Vancouver, seven years in Chicago, and 11 years in Philadelphia. She taught for 20 years at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Alberta, Canada, and the University of British Columbia. In 1975, André returned to Brussels, but she retains a studio in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia and commutes between the two countries.

Collections of her paintings can be found at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Princeton University Museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., and the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. She has exhibited across Canada and in Belgium, Philadelphia, Chicago, Portland, and Seattle. She previously exhibited at Haverford in 1970, 1972, 1973, and 1974.

The Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and noon-5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Françoise André will give a talk Tuesday, Nov. 11, at 4:15 p.m. in the Gallery. For more information, call (610) 896-1287.