Article published in Caractère Noël #13, 1963

With all the respect I hold for Rémy Lejeune (Ladoré) -ever since I had the great pleasure to discover his first drawings, when he was twenty year old, I still don’t know how to classify him, over the years, this respect has grown into admiration for an artist working outside the industry of contemporary pseudo-beauty, who has remained true to himself, following a classical, but reinvented line, and has remained true to his imagination, which is, as Baudelaire said, the queen of faculties.

I truly do not know how to classify Rémy Lejeune, because in all sincerity, I place him at the highest level of graphic art, between two distinct modes, or perhaps two worlds: the real and the unreal.

Ingres wrote that drawing encompasses three-quarters and a half of what forms painting. What does a colorful, flashy painting matter, one that weighs slightly too heavily on the optic nerve without any real intelligence ?

Drawing is therefore of major interest in and of itself -at least for me- because it deals with the significance of sign, without the tinsel of conventional primary colors.

Rémy Lejeune is a peerless draftsman, an unrivaled draftsman, an extraordinary artist, because he works confidently and with a lofty restraint -with black lines only, without succumbing to a minor or secondary genre. This is why, in my own view, he deserves a glowing tribute.

There is a nobility in drawing, in personal meaning, in the respect for traditions and in the precise movements of a drawing. Rémy Lejeune is thus one of the first -if not the first- draftsman of his generation to devote himself to realism and surrealism, through the moving purity of line and form, as well as the sensual and spiritual brilliance of the motifs. He pursues these with total objectivity and a serious sense of humor.

The fact Pierre Bricage and his wife, Berthe Bricage -who modestly call themselves artisan printers, while they are actually masters of the highest quality books- selected Rémy Lejeune to illustrate the complete works of Boileau, is a positive statement for the future of art books and engravings, which furthers the magic of the written word. I use « magic » because Rémy Lejeune, with all his talent, has given Boileau’s work a facelift, a new lease on life that showcases his poetry in time.

Marcel Sauvage, french journalist and author.