Jean-Baptiste VALADIÉ : July 20 - 25, 2008

Oil and acrylics : celebrating the female figure

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Valadié is a exceptional draftsman and a great architect. His paintings are organized around a well defined composition, which is altogether rigorous and flexible, giving a magic feeling of balance. The art of Valadié is a constant search for beauty, a tireless perfection in composition, lines and colors, a permanent and passionate impulse towards a dream which opens up on the absolute. Valadié has spent his whole life celebrating the human body in his art. His female figures offer, by their suggestive attitudes, at times erotic, a sort of ritualistic ceremony.

I would like to share my pictorial passions with the students of this workshop. The desire of an artist is to make a work of art of his own creation, however he cannot express himself without technique, materials and practice. I will teach how to capture the essentials when drawing a portrait or a figure and get harmonious results in a short time. We will see how to treat a figure in color and how to make a suggestive background be it abstract or figurative with elements like flowers or still life. I will share my personal techniques using acrylics and finishing with oil colors.

Graduate of the École des Arts Appliqués de Paris, Valadié is credited with more than 170 exhibitions in France and abroad, his participation in the national salons (Salons d'Automne, Peintres Témoins de leur Temps, Comparaisons, Dessin et Peinture à l'Eau), many rare limited editions, about twenty TV specials and the decoration of the Saline-de-Giraud chapel in Camargue. Not only is he a painter but also sculptor, engraver, draftsman, lithographer and illustrator. He was awarded many distinctions and prizes and, in the United States, he was named honorary Colonel of the South and citizen of honor of several cities like Washington and New-Orleans. Galleries in France : Léadouze in Cannes, Graal in Toulouse, de la Place in Lyon, du Dauphin in Honfleur. Bibliography : Bénézit, Akoun, Arts Actualités Magazine n°116 June 2001 p.60-61, "Arabesques" (Vision Nouvelle) 1977, "Valadié" (Librairie Séguier) 1989, "Jean-Baptiste Valadié" Les Grands Peintres Contemporains du XXè siècle (Terre des Arts) 1997.