“
He gave me his life force.
Catherine Ringer is auctioning around a hundred works by her father, the painter Sam Ringer, an unknown survivor of nine concentration camps, who "
incense colors
" in his paintings.
"
My father loved Jérôme Bosch,
Max Ernst,
but he was also a great admirer of
Leonardo da Vinci
for the manufacture of many things outside of painting
", confides the singer met by AFP in the walls of Bonhams Cornette of Saint Cyr, in Paris, place of this auction on March 29.
The story of this jack of all trades, also a sculptor, engraver, among other talents, who died in 1986, is known to Rita Mitsouko fans.
It's all in the song
It was a man
.
"
I was looking for his memory at that time
," says the artist.
"
He was born in 1918 in Poland, he spent his youth in Oswiecim
(a town near the Auschwitz camp, editor's note),
he was of Jewish origin, not particularly religious, born of an unknown father, he lived with his grand- mother, her mother had gone to work
”.
"
In a very anti-Semitic era, he was accepted at the Fine Arts in Krakow, he had a first prize in drawing
," she continues.
Before blowing, moved, "
then he was a victim of the Nazis
".
Read alsoThe great Catherine Ringer revives the Rita Mitsouko madness at the Philharmonie
Sam Ringer passed through nine concentration camps between 1940 and 1945 before being released by the Russians.
After his convalescence - "
he treated dysentery, lung diseases...
" - he left in 1947 for Paris, "
the dream of artists
".
There he met at the Beaux-Arts the one who became the mother of Catherine Ringer.
“
He was a refugee, who didn't have any money, he sometimes painted at first on salvaged ticking.
My mother, who worked in an architect's studio, then paid him for good quality canvas, which annoyed him a lot
, ”smiles the singer.
“
He is someone who had this dramatic story but it is not what we see in his painting, on the contrary, he praised life, colors, and me.
".
And to describe the painting behind her where Sam Ringer, who has false airs of David Crosby, “
represents himself towards the end of his life in his studio, in his dream of Paris, Montmartre, seeking the sacred fire, the light
”.
Sam Ringer has worked on all formats, miniatures or large sizes, sailing from the abstract - which his daughter finds "
not so abstract
" - to the phantasmagorical figurative.
In the painting
Réminiscences
, Catherine Ringer is depicted as a baby.
Sam Ringer has made several forays into the world of Rita Mitsouko.
"
I have always loved what my father did, since I was 15, as soon as I could, I showed around me what he was doing
".
Magic lantern and punks
For the clip of a Rita hit,
Marcia Baïla
, the singer "
orders ghosts
" from her.
He creates characters out of limbo, on a human scale, on cut plywood.
Only one appears briefly in the video.
For “
the decorator and the director of the clip
”, chilly, these creatures do not enter “
in the atmosphere of the clip
”, remembers Catherine Ringer.
For one of the first concerts of Rita Mitsouko in the Parisian hall of the Gibus, Sam Ringer projects on the walls his drawings and paintings using "
a magic lantern
" made by him.
"
It was a clash of cultures, there were friends of his in chic raincoats and the crested punks from the Gibus who were jumping everywhere
", rewinds the sixty-year-old.
"
I'm coming to a time in my life when I have to act, take these paintings out of the cupboards, there with this sale, it's a good opportunity to do a lot for my father's work
", concludes -she.
