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Born in 1898 in Theizé (Rhône) from a family which was much involved in science and arts, Charles Lapicque, in a pure humanist tradition, multiplied experiments all along his life.
Both artist and scientist, he followed two parallel vocations. He was graduated in 1921 from École centrale (link). He became an engineer until 1928. Due to the consequences of the '29 economical crisis, he had to accept in 1931 a technical job at the Science Faculty of Paris. He used the ressources of his laboratory to make researches about color perception and, using them in his painting art, totally jostled the pictural conventions issued from the Renaissance period. The "grid system" that he created in 1939, was derivated from cubic space, from fauvism and medieval art. It was the final point of his optical discoveries which were themselves underlied by a philosophical approach. This new style had a important influence on the group of painters called "twenty painters of the french tradition", in which Lapicque participated in 1941, with the Braun gallery.
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In 1943, he let down for good his scientific career to entirely devote his life to his pictural work. During the fifties, swimming against the tide of his time, he asserted his attachment to figuration, even if he made some incursions into abstraction (more likely non-figuration). He went over small and large subjects. Keeping all along his long life the love of seasides, gorgeous colours and dynamic compositions, he has been constantly searching the balance and the felicity that he expected from painting.

"Even if the means used by the painters are abstract (with an accuracy we can quote as an example), the artist characteristic is not wallow into his technique… but to express this big myth about sea which is also one of the basis of his pictural adventure. When you see those dazzling arabesques of pure tones, this strong and elliptic drawing, knotting, unknotting and rolling like waves, you can say that modern painting meets here, with a very special happiness, something flirting with its highest justification : this big appointment with reality… This "freedom of action".

Charles ESTIENNE
in l'Observateur 11.13.1952
Exhibition Galerie La Hune(The sea)