The plastic artist Françoise Pétrovitch, whose work skillfully marries contemporary and classical inspirations, will benefit from her first retrospective, starting on Sunday, at the Hélène and Édouard Leclerc Fund in Landerneau in Finistère, where her drawings, paintings, sculptures , ceramics or even videos present a world that is both poetic and disturbing.
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"
This is the first retrospective of Françoise Pétrovitch, one of the great living French artists
", congratulates AFP Camille Morineau, curator of this exhibition which is held until April 3 at the center of contemporary art of the small town located not far from Brest.
Organized on a thematic basis, the retrospective presents some 150 works by the artist who exhibits regularly in France - she will be at the National Library of France in 2022 -, but also in Tokyo, Berlin, New York and Washington.
"The ages of life, Gestures, Nocturnes, Hybrids
... each time the themes present a world that is both poetic and disturbing, populated by human and animal figures. The exhibition shows something that is quite unique and rare among contemporary artists in general, the ability to work with all mediums, drawing, painting, sculpture, metal as well as ceramics, film ... " ,
underlines Camille Morineau, also citing the sets, the costumes of live shows or the choreographies.
The retrospective thus begins with his first works produced in the margins of notebooks or printed books and continues with large wash paintings (black ink applied by a wet brush with a dilution effect), passing through sculptures in enamelled sandstone. , like this bust of a woman whose hands hide her face and entitled
Derrière les paupières
.
“And so it is for almost all the faces that the artist represents: the eyes are blindfolded, hidden behind hands, a mask, a shadow or even the eyelids. In this way, Françoise Pétrovitch teaches us to look at the details, the streaks, the colors, ”
notes the commissioner
.
Before adding
"And we are programmed to go towards the face and when we have no eyes the gaze spreads over the surface of the painting."
For thirty years, the artist, born in Chambéry in 1964, has taught at the École Supérieure des arts et des industries graphiques, the École Estienne, in Paris.
The FHEL (the Hélène et Édouard Leclerc fund) was created in 2011 in the former convent which housed the first warehouses of the Leclerc stores in the 1960s. Artists such as Picasso, Chagall, Giacometti and Dubuffet have already been exhibited there. .