We are linked together by some memories of 1939-1941. A Military Academy of cadets in Laval, after then the choice for Aviation. There were two Air Force Academies: Versailles then Rabat. Escaping from the black-out, the light, the space, the discovery of an unexpected Marocco, out of time, which didn’t contradict Delacroix. Giving ourselves up to orientalist fascinations and to freedom we were given, we were a few to live in «medina» in a Arabian Hotel.
Miraculous «delay», before the roundabout which were likely to scatter the effectives. The known ending didn’t give us the opportunity to taste it. Neither Baron-Renouard, nor we were discharged. More training, more bonus from our flight, more braids all over our sleeves. For a year longer, we were told to stay in a strange organism, neither military nor civil, curiously named Armistice Army.
For me, the march ended right there. For Baron-Renouard, it kept on going. More than respectably. Like flying over super fortresses for six years, in which were for the world the climb from the deep.
This is not to differentiate our Karma by starting to talk about this preamble, for the reason is that the initial course of his life was to me unique regarding other painters of the generation who were known during the years following the Liberation.
I invoke memories, because, since Rabat, since the first phase, and without any hesitation about his future life, Baron-Renouard, as he seemed to demonstrate about himself, having his own certainty, could only aim at becoming a painter and nobody else. Like no-one, in the group, he showed me his destiny as precisely as it could be.
This was surely meant to be, because of the fact he was born in the temple, he was the grand-son of Paul Renouard, talented and famous artist, for whom, all what his time offered him was and endless resource.
The grandson has the same vital «accent», the same curiosity coping with reality … Is the first experience he knew an explanation for his need of space and panoramic discovery? Looking down from a cockpit, the earth is a world without frontiers, purified of what is ephemeral, without anecdote. Baron-Renouard has a way which shows gladness, terrestrial requirements, which only limits are colours and forms, in every aspects.
No-one can be less sedentary. He would go from place to place …. He’s got friends in Paris, Geneva, Tokyo. He is delighted by Japan. Mexico, Teheran, Bagdad, Sofia invited him in turns. He always seemed to be ready for moving. Ready for a flight, like in the past when he were in the field.
Greedy in advance of what he would discover, and find again. No dispersion, under the wings of the aircraft, the world remains a «weft», an invitation. The profession, trustly, full of tactile inventions, the work-room, are building up another universe. His canvas show it. In there, the forms are joined together, are superposed in complex architecture, a kind of verticality. He re-invents his own memory, what his own vision gave him in his Bretagne or in Kyoto.
Baron-Renouard – as a painter and as a man – lived his existency without loosing this love for life, or let’s say optimism. We shall thank him …
In an era full of violence, non-sens and moroseness, his work keeps intact in its light the trust which, since the beginning, urged him to this life.
Camille Bourniquel
Writer