J.X. de Combeloup
Portrait, vers 1980
Pastel – 31 x 24 cm
Jean-Xavier de Combeloup suit une formation en lettres classiques et part ensuite pour l’Italie et suit des cours d’Académie à Florence et Rome.
Déjà adolescent, il avait transformé une partie du grenier de la maison en cabinet de curiosités, accumulant animaux empaillés, coquillages et minéraux ainsi que des gravures et photographies anciennes, dont 42 épreuves albuminées du Baron von Gloeden, hérités d’un grand oncle qui avait fait le voyage à Taormina (son voyage de noces!).
Ces photographies de garçons nus dans des ruines baignées de soleil furent une révélation et motivèrent sa quête d’un idéal de beauté païenne dans ce paradis du Sud encore préservé. Toute sa vie durant, il sera inspiré par cette iconographie et nombre de photos originales de von Gloeden ou d’autres photographes,
servirons de modèles à ses dessins, peintures, sculptures.
Jean-Xavier de Combeloup a inlassablement parcouru la Méditerranée sur les traces de Roger Peyrefitte et de tous les autres nostalgiques des arcadies perdues.
Resident in a boys school, he studied Greek and Latin. At seventeen, freshly graduated, he travelled to Italy band attended Academy lessons in the art schools of Florence and Rome, earning his living as a waiter and collecting all sorts of heteroclite objects.
As a teenager, he had already turned a section of the family castle’s attic into a “curiosity’s cabinet”, collecting stuffed birds, shells and minerals as well a ancient engravings and photographs, among which 42 albumine prints of the baron von Gloeden, inherited from his great-uncle the marquis of Yzumes, who had done Taormina-trip (his wedding trip!).
He was stunned these photographs of young boys set naked in ancient ruins glowing in the sun, which forever motivated his quest for a ideal pagan beauty in these still unspoilt Southern paradises.
An his all life long he was to be influenced by this iconography, using a great number of vintage pictures by the baron or other photographers as models for his drawings, paintings and sculptures.
J.X. de Combeloup restlessly visited the Mediterranean countries on the track of Peyrefitte and all those longing for the lost Arcadiae. He wrote down his feelings in as many a thirty booklets in which a mix drawings, aphorisms, collages and restaurant bills can be found.
