André Brasilier Exhibition

Opera Gallery

[Image: André Brasilier "La nuit bleue" (2017) oil on canvas, 63.8 x 51.2 in.]

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André Brasilier’s paintings explore the world as if viewed on a horse ride through the Saumur countryside, over the course of a long summer afternoon. Akin to the natural landscapes around Touraine which were the artist’s first source of inspiration, his work requires a significant amount of time to be discovered and relished. It changes over days and seasons, shifting from touches of ochre, black and white to solid red with emerald patterns and expanses of blue.

Brasilier’s work has matured over more than 60 years and continues to inspire the same sense of peacefulness and tranquility, the warmth of reassuring places, familiar to people on all continents. The lyricism and sincerity that inhabit the barely-outlined figures in his paintings are emotive, as if they were there almost by chance, a serendipitous presence.

Since the beginning of what would become the lengthy process of learning, in 1994, Brasilier’s work has seemed to us intimately and universally humanist. His themes - nature, music, horses, muses - are simple yet powerful, depicted with an application and technique inherited from the great French academic tradition.

Shifting beyond his roots, travel plays an important role in his work, with its Parisian monuments, Moroccan fantasias, Roman flâneurs, Japanese-style tunics and New York skylines. Brasilier takes his muse on journeys too, whether to physical places or through his imagination. The loved one is everywhere, figurative or suggested: she inhabits his paintings like an obsessive presence and a tireless inspiration, to which the artist has dedicated a lifetime’s work. It is also serendipitous that today, we are exhibiting a selection of 50 of the artist’s works in a city that had such an aesthetic impact on him. From frenetic jazz to colossal buildings and nocturnal fervor on Broadway, Brasilier paints New York with the same candid beauty we witness in all his work. It is an honor to be able to share it with you.