La clef des songes - Der Traumschlüssel (2001) Painting by Schazell

Born in 1951 in Lorraine, near Metz.

I have always been very interested in Philosophy, to which I devoted several years. I come back to it periodically, either directly or through painting, curiously. De Chirico spoke well of metaphysical painting; there must therefore be a secret corridor which connects them to each other.

When did I cross the path of painting? Precisely I don't know; but if I had to date it, it would be in the 70s. More than that of painting, I should also say that it was the trail of painters that I first followed, at least of some of them. between them. A great painter of the 20th century, I believe it was Picasso, said that we often get into painting for the obvious and banal reason that we want to have (great) works at home that belong to museums or which we could never afford, and which we therefore only have the solution of reproducing, with the hazards and the modesty that such a perspective implies of course.

I think I went through this “moment” before active, creative painting, where we tirelessly return to the same painters, to the same works, in museums or in art books.

Sometimes it’s not a particular painter by name, but an artistic movement. But there is a common denominator in all of this: these works hold you, your gaze remains glued to them for whole minutes, to extract the atmosphere, then only to go into the detail of the color, the line, the thickness or fades, in short the technique.

This is how, before being able to “release” something from myself, I was crossed by certain movements, from different eras: both by so-called “academic” painters, such as David, Baron Gérard; of the romantics: Géricault, Caspar Friedrich, as well as by the surrealists: De Chirico, Dali, Magritte, Ernst, Tanguy, etc... Ultimately, I think that it is the Surrealists who infiltrated my mind, who settled there , although mixed with other contemporaries, in the style of Bacon or Rebeyrolle, each in their own universe. Sometimes I tend to think that painting must mean something, that it is almost militant; sometimes, conversely, I am close to affirming that there is nothing beyond the gaze. This is what we feel in front of the immense canvases of Zao Wou Ki.

Perhaps it’s the ambivalence of art...

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1951
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary French Artists