Exhibition dedicated to the 85th anniversary of Alain Bonfoy "Flight of beauty. PARIS-MOSCOW" Automatic translate

For the first time in Russia, the GARTALLERY™ Gallery presents a solo exhibition by the French-Italian artist Alain Bonfoy, who is celebrating his 85th birthday this year. As a gifted painter, graphic artist, engraver and sculptor, he gained wide popularity in Europe, Japan, South Korea, Tahiti, USA, starting from the 60s of the last century.

Art critics define Bonfoy’s creative creed as "the painter of Venus". The artist is endlessly inspired by the beauty of the female body and human emotions. A woman for him is a metaphor for vitality. For more than half a century, his works have been a colorful ode to femininity, where classical cultural traditions of Europe and Asia are mixed, a modernist approach and color harmonies of Italian landscapes. The modernity of the images is given by the sharpness of the angles, the intensity of the contrasts of light and shadow. Line, space and color are the main elements that characterize the formal, stylistic and, in a certain sense, epic studies of Alain Bonfoy. A clear line, born of a confident and thoughtful movement, conquers the space of the canvas, making it three-dimensional, able to accommodate the forms of female figures,

Alain’s vision, even if it starts with a model in the studio, is completely introspective, created from impressions of the resonance of the female form: not a sublime and ideal body, but rather an individual body. The specific model named after her, her posture and gesture are interpreted in relation to the surrounding space, which is often filled with bright colors, draperies, painted walls and rich tones.

Alain Pierre Bonfoy was born in 1937 in Paris, Montmartre. He studied at the Higher National School of Fine Arts in Paris, then at the Department of Engraving and Sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels.

Since 1961, in Paris, Alain studied for two years in the workshop of the sculptor Antoniucci Volti, who became his mentor in art and in life. Volti said about his student: “Alain Bonfoy, a generous and sympathetic person, occupies one of the best places in the fine arts of the new generation. There is nothing superfluous in his creative poetic drawing… The artist, his rich color palette, serves women in luxurious bodies… ".

Since 1964, the artist has finally chosen the most interesting topic for himself, which made him famous - images of female nudes. “A woman is an object of almost mystical worship, which displaces from the pictorial space everything that does not lead to her triumph. You can feel how the painting is an act of love for this artist, where the canvas is a transcendent mediator with the model,” wrote art critic Jean-Pierre Chopin.

In 1965, the master moved to Tuscany, but continued his work in a Parisian studio. He still lives between France and Italy, which he considers his second home.

In 1973 Alain traveled to Japan for the first time, where he got acquainted with the traditional sumi-e calligraphy technique, which deeply influenced his work. Sumi-e, literally "ink painting", is an art form that seeks to convey the essence of a subject or genre scene as succinctly as possible, with the fewest strokes and lines. In the philosophy of the East, Bonnefoy found a discipline that allows him to individualize and realize the essence of the female form as a poetic element in direct connection between heaven and earth, creating the spiritual from the physical. Sumi-e is essentially a meditative path between an object and the world, a sensual way to trace

the boundaries between the body and space, both external and internal, in a convincing plastic volumetric allusion. To master sumi-e, you must use the Four Treasures: ink stone, ink stick, brush and special paper. Bonfoy made repeated trips to Japan and Korea to further in-depth study of the sumi-e style and is now a recognized European master of this ancient oriental technique.

The artist’s works have been exhibited since 1969 in France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Germany, USA, Tahiti, South Korea and Japan.

Alain Bonfoy’s works are kept in museum collections: Bizen, Fujiwara Yu, Tokyo, Japan, Kwang Ju Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, Collection of the French Ministry of Culture, Paris, Utrillo and Valadon Museum, Sannoy, France, Marino Museum Marini, Florence, Italy, Boccaccio Museum in Certaldo, Italy, Raffaele de Grada Museum, San Gimignano, Italy.

The exposition of the Moscow exhibition will include more than fifty works of different periods of creativity from the collection of the author: painting on canvas and on wood, sculpture, works in mixed media, color graphics in the style of sumi-e.

Curator of the exhibition project “Beauty Flight. PARIS-MOSCOW” — Ksenia Grishchenko, founder of the GARTALLERY™ gallery, owner of the Art Club, artist, contemporary art collector.