Paul de Pignol

Paul de Pignol was born in Toulouse in 1965. He currently lives and works between Paris and Montigny-sur-Loing.

In 1984, he entered the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, where he worked in Pierre Carron’s painting studio. He created his first sculpture, inspired by the Venus of Lucas Cranach, entitled “Fille au Ballon” in 1989. Little by little, sculpting was integrated into his practice.

In 2010, de Pignol decided to dedicate a specific workshop to drawing in Paris, establishing a link between the two disciplines a short time afterwards. Whether sculpting or drawing, de Pignol plunges into an intimate essence of the being. He focuses his work on feminine figures, linking them with universal themes of birth, life, and death. Throughout his study of the female figure, he began questioning its function, weight, and composition, as well as its deconstruction and presence both of the interior and exterior.

De Pignol’s paintings are an extension of his work and research as a sculptor. His gestures are similar, wherein he erases matter in order to add light, stroke by stroke, giving his unravelling bodies a spectral presence.

Since 2017, after years of failure, rejection, and wandering, de Pignol found pictorial language relative to his research. One of his recent exhibitions at Loo & Lou Gallery, Né du limon, is the result of this quest. With a fascination for landscapes, the artist is inspired by the Fontainebleau forest that surrounds his studio. The idea that any life can be birthed from decay fascinates him, and inspires him to create organic and living landscapes, where you can feel the turf and soil. We are close to Golem. This exhibition reunited for the first time drawings, sculptures, and canvases, in what represented for the artist a joyous and fertile renewal, thanks to both the subject matter and the use of multiple medias.