Edouard Pignon is born in 1905 in Bully-les-Mines (Pas-de-Calais, France). His childhood is difficult; he works in a mine, then in a plant from 1920 to 1927. He moves to Paris in 1927 and begins his studies at the Applied Arts School and in the Labour University. His first solo exhibition is held in 1939 (Paris). Edouard Pignon joins the Communist Party in 1933. He is a resistance member during the Second World War. With Bazaine, Esteve, Lapicque, Le Moal and Manessier, Pignon is one of “Twenty painters of French tradition”, who exhibits in Paris at the Braun Galery in 1941. Throughout his career, Edouard Pignon practices a resolutely figurative painting, blaming abstract art to suppress the reality. The subjects of his paintings often evoke his political commitment, however, without practicing “socialist realism”. Pignon declines his pictorial work in series (the rooster fights, the pushers of wheat, Divers, The large red bares, etc.), paintings, watercolors, giant ceramics-sculptures. Man of character who wants to be free, Edouard Pignon, a friend of Picasso, married to the art critic Helen Parmelin, constantly refuses any commitment to any movement or academy. Artist always against the stream, primarily a colorist, his work is present in most major museums in France and abroad. Edouard Pignon dies in 1993 in La Couture-Boussey (France). To help create a museum in Marles-les-Mines, Edouard Pignon donates forty of his paintings, drawings and lithographs, as well as works by his friend Picasso (In 1951-1952, Picasso and Pignon shared a workshop in Vallauris).