Françoise Nielly’s Exhibition, Paris

Oil on canvas, as of late, has had some difficulty catching people’s attention in a contemporary art scene filled with 20-meter photographsand building-sized light installations. Françoise Nielly’s portraits (a new exhibition of which opens next month at the Galerie Menouar) do not have this problem.

Growing up on the sun drenched Côte d’Azur explains to a degree the intensity of color in her paintings. Nielly’s monumental faces (as large as 196 x 62 centimeters) explode with fluorescents, fuchsia and neons. Her paintings, as described in her biography, “exhibit a brute force, a fascinating vital energy.”

Nielly, who now lives in Paris’ Montmartre neighborhood, doesn’t paint with a brush, rather sculpts her compositions with a knife. The faces come from black and white photographs which she renders into vivacious color. And what faces – sensual lips, piercing eyes and smoldering expressions charge her work with a sexual voltage.

Françoise has been working in a variety of mediums for over 20 years. She explored photography, illustrations, and computer animation before arriving at painting as her preferred form. With an architect father and studies at the Beaux art and Decorative arts, it is not surprising she paints with such technical precision and mastery of composition. You can see her in action in a short video on her website.

She chooses a diverse, but unflinchingly beautiful cast of faces for her subjects. Although mostly anonymous, the odd famous face makes a cameo, most notably a portrait of Barack Obama from 2008, grinning mirthfully. Her next show, opening November 29th is titled “Les Diabolique.”

Galerie Menouar
16, Rue de Parc-Royal
75003 Paris

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By David Meyer, David is an American writer and art enthusiast based in Paris.

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