Pierre Wemaëre (1913-2010) was a French painter whose distinctive career combined the French modernist tradition with a lifelong artistic partnership with the Danish master Asger Jorn. Born to a bourgeois family in Flanders, Wemaëre began painting in 1933 in a figurative mode, absorbing the disciplined European painterly foundation on which he would build his mature career. Beginning in 1936, under the tutelage of Fernand Léger and working in his studio, Wemaëre adopted his teacher's tendency toward simplified, geometricized forms and the confident structural clarity that had made Léger one of the leading French modernists.

In 1937 Wemaëre collaborated with his fellow Léger pupil Asger Jorn, who would become his close lifelong friend, to realize a commission for the International Exhibition in Paris. Not only did they work together on numerous projects under their teacher, but they extended their collaboration to include later monumental works of their own, in both paintings and tapestries. The two exhibited together for the first time in Copenhagen in 1938, and their friendship would last until Jorn's death in 1973, forming one of the most sustained cross-national artistic partnerships of the twentieth century.

Wemaëre's style bears the distinct marks of Nordic inspiration combined with French temperament. Finding Léger's linearity and mechanical vocabulary unsuited to his own instincts, Wemaëre turned instead to the Surrealist work of Joan Miró and the abstractions of Paul Klee for inspiration. Floating elements, winding lines, and composite abstract and figurative forms are revealed throughout his mature paintings through his considerable mastery of color. Stylistically related in some respects to the Abstract Expressionists, Wemaere used impasto and a bold palette to transpose forms that were simultaneously impetuous and restrained.

Wemaëre was inscribed into the canon of the European avant-gardes after exhibiting at the 1939 Réalités Nouvelles show at the Galerie Charpentier. In the midst of the Second World War, he was invited to New York City by Solomon Guggenheim in 1940 but was forced to decline the invitation after being sent to the front. His experience in the war would monumentally alter the nature of his work. Afterward, he exhibited regularly in prestigious spaces throughout Europe alongside artists including Jorn, Jean Dubuffet, and Lucio Fontana. His paintings are held today in significant European museum and private collections.