Until Sunday, May 8, Espace Orlando in Saint-Jean-Lespinasse presents the exhibition “Landscapes” by Georges Cueille and pays tribute to the couple Peter and Denise Orlando. Georges Cueille, born in 1927 in Corrèze, discovered the artistic field very early. He will be a student at the National School of Decorative Arts in Limoges and later in Paris will integrate the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. At first he settled in Vallauris. He runs a painting and ceramics studio there. Then he will settle with his wife Maïa in Saint-Jean-Lespinasse in 1960. Some inhabitants of the north of the Lot remember the six years during which he was nicknamed “the potter of Saint-Céré” in his shop – workshop of the place from the Mercadial.
Georges Cueille’s painting is often that of landscapes dotted with houses or hamlets, cultivated fields, of which he captures the picturesque, the lines and the contrasting colors of the plots, the orderly vegetation. These are canvases that burst with color and warmth. But white can also dominate, in mountainous or snowy countries.
Peter Orlando and his wife Denise, both born in 1921, marked by their stay of about thirty years in Saint-Céré the art lovers of the surrounding municipalities.
Peter is an American artist, settled in France after the Second World War in which he participated, during the landing of June 1944. In Paris he accidentally met Denise Delgoudet. For more than three decades the couple lived and worked in Paris. From 1953 to 1968 they stood out for the creation of everyday ceramics, vases, lamps, dishes for table service, with very original shapes and patterns. Peter is then both painter and ceramist, assisted by Denise who will execute a large part of the motifs adorning the pieces of earthenware molded by her husband. Two distinct artists in one man! He exhibits and sells his paintings in France as well as in the United States.