Biography
Pierre de Berroeta was born in Paris 1914.

From his childhood, he spent his family holidays in the Basque country, at Bayonne.
After attending school at the Lycée Pasteur of Neully, he was admitted  to the Ecole de Beaux-Arts  de Paris in 1933. He studeid  there in the studio of André Dewambez, and then with Charles Guérin.
He qualified to compete for the Prix de Rome, but Guérin, pitting to the Prix de Rome, did not support his candidacy and he did not win a prize.
Mobilised in 1939, he was made a prisoner of war and sent to Pomerania.
His talent was recognized and he was authorized to draw, mainly depicting life in the Stalag.
On his return to France in 1941, he married one of his former fellow students at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Marguerite Barboteu, known as Guichoune.
Two years later, birth of his daugther, Marie-Laure.
He exhibited regulary, especially at Salons.
His parents-in-law lived in Argentina and the couple moved there in 1946.
His palette and technique developed in a totally different context. His success grew.
Back in Paris in 1954, the created tapestry cartoons for Aubusson, Beauvais and the Gobelins.
The temptations of abstraction began to make themselves felt noticeably.
In 1958, he made a definitive move and from then on he was abstract. New success came.
Until 2001, his art evolved continually and abundantly.
In all, he created hundreds of paintings, a gouache a day and about 150 tapestry cartoons !
His health having become fragile and the gradual loss of vision forced him to stop all creative work.
In 2004, he died at Ustaritz, in the Basque country.

…Towards the end of the 1960s, Pierre De Berroeta used new materials in his painting to accompagny the oils that no longer gave him full satisfaction as expected. He had always loved substance and added sand to his usual medium. In this way he could play even more with relief effects. To do this, he emptied tubes of white on his palette and mixed this with very sand. He applied this new medium to the canvas using a toothed squeegee, allowing him to create new reliefs, first vertically and then in smooth curves to animate the life of the canvas even more and to give it a new dimension.
With time, a large number of new graphic elements came into his work. Multi-coloured checkerboard patterns, spirals, orange and red suns, lines that lead to small triangular areas. Colour, always omnipresent, divides itself, is distributed throughout the abstract narrative. This universe is absolutely fascinating in its creativity and its permanent renewal.

Patrick-Gilles PERSIN