Introduced to painting at the age of five by her mother, a graduate of the Beaux-Arts in Geneva, Colette Richarme spent her first nine years in China, until the death of her father. She returned to France and completed a fabric design apprenticeship in Lyon during the First World War. Between 1920 and 1935 she lived in the Savoie region, first in Albertville, close to her mother’s family. There, she met Jean Boisseau, an Alpine hunter with whom she would have three children. The death of their youngest child later precipitated the family’s move to Annecy. During this period, C. Richarme worked independently, producing a collection of splendid gouaches, now conserved in the Haute-Savoie archives in Annecy.

From 1936 to 1937 the artist continued her artistic training in Paris. She attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where she took classes in various studios, including those of Charles Blanc (1869-?), with whom she studied drawing, Yves Brayer (1907-1990), who taught nude and portraiture composition, Jan Darna (1901-1994), who introduced her to abstraction, and Guillaume Met de Penninghen (1912-1990), who taught her oil painting. Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) was also a student of the workshop where she served as “massière” (head student delegate), the two women bounded and staid in contact through the years. In this way, C. Richarme was able to glean insight from the art and people around her, nourishing her creativity, while remaining firmly autonomous in her intellectual approach, exploring the subtleties of colour, influenced by the work of André Lhote (1885-1962).

In 1937 the family moved to Montpellier. During the Second World War, reading heavily influenced C. Richarme’s creative practice. She interpreted the poems of Stéphane Mallarmé in what she called équivalences plastiques [visual equivalences], making powerful drawings and gouaches that were meditations on the line. Her initial poems and drafts of novels also date from this period. Her first exhibition was held in 1940 at the Salon des artistes français; others followed in 1941 and 1943 at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. After the war she returned to Paris to study engraving under Robert Cami (1900-1975). Around this time her work in oil began to attract more interest, as can be seen through her solo and group exhibitions: the painter became a member of the Regain salon in Lyon in 1953, the Parisian gallery Bruno Bassano held her first solo exhibition in 1955, and in 1957 the Musée nationale d’Art moderne acquired her painting Inspiration sétoise [Sète Inspiration] from that same year.

For C. Richarme, painting was life, and her life was her painting; she devoted at least four to five hours to it per day. Her diary records the genesis of her works, the doubts that beset her, difficulties overcome and joy experienced before a completed canvas. The year 1958 was a turning point in her work, inspired by the mists and light of Brittany, the origin of a certain specificity in her work. Situated by critics somewhere between figuration and abstraction, it is characterised by colour, moments of change and structure. Her palettes, which she called little abstracts bear witness to her research into chromatic harmonies.

During the period that followed, between 1963 and 1987, C. Richarme’s work found genuine recognition, despite indifference from her male peers in the Groupe Montpellier-Sète, who often ignored her. In 1964 she became a member of the Salon des indépendants; she would exhibit every year until 1987. She held ten solo exhibitions in Paris, and the 1980s proved a period of great achievement – her work was regularly shown in Béziers, Montpellier and Sète, where, in September 1990, the exhibition Six peintres de la Méditerranée at the Musée Paul Valéry cemented her place in the art world, just as the homage paid to her at the Salon des indépendants did in 1992. Today, the Richarme association is involved in multiple projects including the naming of a street in Montpellier, as well as exhibitions in Montpellier, Pézenas and Sommières, to name a few.