PARIS
India Ink Drawings by ODETTE CAMP
Born of a blue sky and a changing sea, I have said that I don’t like Paris. But here it is before my eyes with its myriad faces, from the Canal de la Villette to the Institute, in front of which tall, leafless trees send their reflections into the pearly Seine where large boats idle in front of the Pont Marie.
From squares squeezed between high houses with attic windows to alleyways with potbellied facades, it is the oft-disregarded Paris which the precise and profound sketches of Odette Camp reveal to us.
The home of Queen Anne d’Autriche, the arches of the Hôtel d’Argenson, the grapevines scaling the walls of the Cour de Rohan... it took those brushes made of twigs dipped in India ink to revive their ancestral magic to our eyes. And the magic of bridges... and water....
From the secret charm of the Place de Furstenberg to the Barbès Carrousel, and including a variety of lovingly observed recesses, the rigorous and sensitive Odette Camp, guided by her eyes of poet-painter, allows us to share in the emotion that radiates from this enormous city, the Queen of France. Her highly personal technique is effective whether portraying the unexpected nobility of Paris’ old neighborhoods, the solemn Corsican countryside underscored by watercolors, or the virile contours of unmasted Spanish boats. Through the power of her pursuit, well beyond the picturesque (a sure sign of mastery), Odette Camp thrusts us into the very heart of pathos.
Thyde MONNIER, 1960
Odette Camp et la presse
Odette Camp et Paris
