Awareness: Guillaume Bresson

While I struggle to find anything I would change about my Paris trip last spring, I do regret one thing: not seeing Guillaume Bresson's exhibit while at Versaille. Bresson, a preeminent French figure painter currently working in New York. A master of staging and movement, Bresson is described as "both a painter and director." His hyperrealist, baroque-derivative paintings explore conflict and violence in the modern world through a classical lense. As described in his Versaille exhibition, Bresson "isolates and detaches the bodies and then rearranges them into a group", constructing "paintings in which body language plays a central role in the creation of the narrative." It's striking to me how similar this description is to my own latest piece; I can learn multitudes from his processes of collecting references, building contrast, and modeling tension.

CV

EDUCATION

2020 Flax Foundation, Los Angeles, USA

2016 Residency Unlimited, New York, USA

2007 Graduated from l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris with Congratulations of the jury (France)

AWARDS

2020 Del Duca Painting Prize of the Académie des Beaux-Arts

2017 Pierre Cardin Prize from the Académie des Beaux-Arts

2013 Finalist of the Jean-François Prat Art Prize

2010 Recipient of the « Prix Sciences-Po pour l’Art Contemporain »

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2025 Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, France Château de Versailles, Versailles, France

2023 Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

2022 The Armory Show solo presentation, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, New York, USA

2020 Guillaume Bresson, Couvent des Cordeliers, Toulouse, France

. . . (see full CV here: https://www.nathalieobadia.com/usr/library/documents/main/a

rtists/36/bio_bresson_uk.pdf)

More on his fascinating Versaille exhibition displayed in the Africa Rooms of Versailles for comparison with battle scenes of colonial conquest can be found here: https://en.chateauversailles.fr/node/817/guillaume-bresson#partners .

Untitled, 2024, Oil on canvas; 61 x 45,7 x 2,2 cm (24 x 18 x 0 13/16 inches)

Untitled, 2024, Oil on wood; 96,2 x 96,2 x 5,1 cm (37 13/16 x 37 13/16 x 2 inches) framed

Untitled, 2008, Oil on canvas; 170 x 300 cm (66 7/8 x 118 1/8 in)

In both technique and content, Bresson's work is simply breathtaking. As is characteristic of the best Baroque and Renaissance works, Bresson's pieces show a mastery of contrast. In the first image above (2024), he expertly uses tenebrism, which was just assigned as a goal for my next piece. Also noteworthy is the immense scale and deep perspective used in his works, particularly in a series of physical fighting scenes including the last piece above (2008). Overall, Bresson's work represents nearly everything I love about painting, and is a premier model of what I hope to achieve in my own work.