Lallement Eva

About

Eva Lallement, born Hava Seinberg on January 8, 1914, in Chișinău, Republic of Moldova (then Bessarabia), left her hometown at the age of 8 with her Jewish family, fleeing antisemitic pogroms. Settling in Paris in 1924, her parents opened a textile shop, and Eva married Pierre Lallement in 1936, an aviation fitter, with whom she had a daughter, Monique. Her life was marked by profound tragedies: her husband died in the war in the Ardennes in 1940, and her daughter passed away in a car accident in 1960. These losses deeply influenced her artistic work, dominated by themes of death, time, and the human condition. Her artistic career began late, between the ages of 43 and 45, encouraged by the naive painter Jules Lefranc and René Mendès-France, after she discovered paints abandoned by customers in her parents' shop. Her naive, somber, and obsessive style, with dominant black backgrounds, explores existential anguish through instinctive paintings and sculptures, such as "Les Barques," "Enfant mort," or "Les vieux." Her first exhibition took place in 1960-1961 at the Salon des Surindépendants and the Salon Comparaison at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, followed by prestigious invitations: in 1963, the painting "Les fiancés de la lune" at the Sainte-Croix Museum in Les Sables-d'Olonne, thanks to curator Pierre Chaigneau, and in 1966, "La femme au guéridon" at the Salon Comparaison. In the following years, Eva settled in Vendée, opening the Mireille Oasis inn in Les Sables-d'Olonne in 1949, a meeting place for artists, where she personally exhibited in 1976-1977 at the Sainte-Croix Museum. Recognition continued with exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Villeneuve-d'Ascq, the Convergence Gallery in Nantes and Paris (1985-1990), the Museum in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, and the Mossa Gallery in Nice (1984). She died on October 22, 1991, in Les Sables-d'Olonne, leaving behind a disturbing body of work that transforms simple images into modern vanities, reflecting the fragility of life.