“When I paint, my entire body creates. I feel each muscle as it moves. Once the thought-process is finalized, the foundations laid, I let myself be guided by instinct; this is when I really feel free, and painting becomes some sort of automatic writing process.”
LARRIEU - personal report (2022 sept)
VIDEO - SPIRIT OF ART
Larrieu understands Art as a real media vector of humanist, environmentalist and universalist values, and thus justifies the desire to make his work and his message accessible to all to share his passion for Life, his emotion for Beauty and its vision for Sharing.
Bouquet d’Or - 2024
Méroé editions publish the first monograph devoted to the painter Jean-François Larrieu. A story of life(ies) that explains the origins of the artist's painting and the evolution of his work over the years, of his commitments in the world of Art and of his encounters. An exceptional work to discover the Man behind the Work.
A painter inhabited by an invisible force. A painting that is both unique and universal. A "whole" identified at first glance which is in fact the assembly of a multitude of elements, of entities. Entities each in their place, responding to a defined architecture, complex and simple at the same time as Life is.
Combining maturity and innocence, Larrieu’s work resonates with both the spectator and the artist. No need to understand why. Emotion alone suffices.
Larrieu loves to play with color, most often in warm and scintillating hues. It’s what gives his work such energy and movement. The abundance of details – not at all disturbing or confusing to the eye – brings a softened sense to the whole piece. Larrieu’s tableaux are solar. They vibrate joy and tenderness, too. They are the image of life, sensitive and authentic.
Larrieu’s paintings use the accumulation of an ensemble of codes, an unknown language where words are triangles, circles and squares, which, when assembled, come together as an explicit and audible whole. Larrieu’s style drifts between the abstraction of the infinitely petite to the figurative of the infinitely grand. To explore a Larrieu is to launch on a perpetual journey of discovery. The trip is never the same; we always return with a fresh look, a new emotion.
This painting is both personal and dreamlike. Larrieu uses this to deliver his message. He uses his favorite subjects like fauna (natural and urban), flora and the ocean to pay tribute to nature and all the forms of life she contains. Reaffirming our heritage, returning to our roots, to the greatest creations of man, to the absolute necessity of the vegetal...Larrieu invokes all this and more thanks to a unique, pictorial prose. It thus underlines and sublimates the richness of nature and the pure emotion it provides. And at a time when the planet is suffering, he also has the will to challenge the role of Man in its safeguard.
Based on works from his oceanographic universe, Larrieu has worked on making an immersive and digital version of his art: a scripted 3D video in which his marine characters come to life in a ballet that is both poetic and captivating.
The artist using digital technology thus shows his interest in new media where he intends to create an aesthetic and immersive world in order to reach as many people as possible.
Jean-François Larrieu is convinced: artists have a role to play in society; they must feed their art with their political convictions. For him personally, this takes the shape of several daily activities where he’s out defending artists’ rights. Grateful towards other artists who helped him in the beginning of his career, the painter feels it’s his duty to be there for this generation.
President of the Salon d’Automne in Paris from 1995 to 2004, co-founder of Art Capital, currently President of the Fondation Taylor (since 2010), Jean-François Larrieu spares no effort in fulfilling the philanthropic goals that mean so much to him.
From his first participation in the Salon des Indépendants, then in the Salon des Surindépendants in 19878 and especially at the Salon d'Automne in 1982, numerous personal exhibitions of Jean-François Larrieu have been organized all over the world.
The Artist has also taken part in major events in France and abroad as well as in major museum exhibitions.
Use the buttons below to find the exhaustive list of personal exhibitions and / or major events of Larrieu by decade, as well as the list of exhibitions.
