de Francia, Peter
Peter de Francia was born in Beaulieu in Alpes Maritimes in the
South East of France in 1921, but was educated in Brussels and
Paris. After serving in the British army in the Second World War,
De Francia attended the Slade School of Art in London. He
established himself in the 1950s as an artist who produced
powerful politically and socially engaged works of art, influenced
by the social realism he had seen in the work of Leger and Goya.
During his career, he taught at St Martin’s School of Art, the Royal
College of Art and Goldsmiths College.
Over a period of ten years, De Francia got to know Monsieur and
Madame Beylac, who owned a small farm in the South of France.
He viewed them as 'the last vestiges of a totally vanished society'
and admired the simple self-sufficiency of their way of life – the
couple planted their own crops and grew their own food, as well as
making the majority of their own tools.
Greg Salter
Monsieur et Madame Beylac
1974