Mennessons's key themes: Voyages

From stops in restaurants and cafes, Mennessons made some small sketches which would be assembled upon his return, souvenirs of the emotion he had felt at the time. A first contact with “real” art in Swiss museums in the 50s gave him an appetite for more. In Italy, Florence became the subject of numerous oil pastels, drawn on location and from 1965 to 1983. In Germany and Switzerland, waterfalls, lakes, mountains and airfields stopped him for long periods of time.

He also journeyed through France, from Poitou to Alsace, Nice to the Alps before crossing the Atlantic in 1981, where he went from New York to Chicago, visiting Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles. He discovered by plane or boat Staten Island in Manhattan - the often surprising faces of the new world. The essential was, of course, the internal itinerary which made sense of these trips.