(Paris, 1896 – Paris, 1991)

Born in Paris, Rimbert was introduced to painting and music very early on. In 1908 he started working for PTT (Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones) where he stayed until 1955. Rimbert began painting after the first World War, encouraged by Marcel Gromaire and Max Jacob, who organised his first exhibitions before he met Wihelm Uhde. He was also supported by Picasso who admired his work and introduced him to Le Douanier Rousseau.

Included among the Modern Primitives by Wilhelm Uhde, he participated in all the major exhibitions of naïve art, notably the well-known Maîtres populaires de la réalité – Popular Masters of Reality – exhibition in 1937. He invented a painting of silence. Talking about his work, Max Jacob stated: “Something of the calm of nature emanates from Rimbert’s landscape, it is as if he pledged to compete with the silence of matter”. His work indisputably takes its place among the masters of light, notably the Dutch painters of the 17^th century, whom Rimbert deeply admired. His paintings capture a crepuscular moment and diffuse a  climate of melancholy that gives his work a mysterious and emotional character, charged with numerous symbols.

“Rimbert has a smile that expresses kindness. As a painter of walled-in areas and closed doors, his architectural constructions surround a place of predilection that we must protect at all cost. And his suggestive painting, expressed through his small, delicate brushstrokes, symbolizes tranquillity,  inner peace and the dream. We would like to enter his houses, which we imagine as neat and tidy as a vision of Vermeer, and open the doors and the windows to unveil their secrets. To unlock the dream.” Dina Vierny.