Pierre Chanty has perfected the European art of painting the elusive human soul onto canvas.
Far from his beginnings as a figurative and photo-realist artist in the tradition of Richard Estes and Ralph Goings, Chanty overcame the commercial pressures of the last decades to emerge as a staunch champion of voluptuous abstract forms depicted in a rich color spectrum.
Born in 1961, Pierre Chanty is a Fine Arts graduate alumnus of Paris’s prestigious ENSAD (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs) who was tutored by Chinese abstract master Zao Wou Ki before leaving his native France to explore New York City, and Los Angeles, throughout ’80s the ’90s.
In addition, he has also practiced his art in the United Kingdom, over the last decade.
Pierre’s passion for meditation, and for the mystical traditions of Zen masters, has led him on a world quest to attune his vision to the subtle vibrations of colors and fine hues that permeate the visible and invisible realms. To this end, he achieves the apex of his resonance with subtle forms through automatic drawing, and other unique exercises, in a spontaneous and intuitive creative communion with the higher self.
This oil painter’s journey is an embrace of the traditional medium, from carefully preparing his own canvas to selecting the finest fabrics, the most vibrant pigments, and delicate graphite; his process, both artistic and personal, is one of purification of the prime elements on which the work, and the man, must stand before their nature.
A lover of rural settings, Pierre is an alchemist, transmuting the infinite form to a finite medium, from which he guides the viewer back out again, into limitless contemplation.
Pierre’s pantheon of inspiration includes: Hans Hartung, Willem de Kooning, Victor Vasarely, Franz Kline, Jackson Polock, Robert Motherwell, Pierre Soulages, Zao Wou Ki, Sam Francis, Roy Lichtenstein, Arman, Yaacov Agam, Gerhard Richter, Richard Estes, James Rosenquist, Claude Viallat, Frank Stella, Richard Serra, Pablo Atchugarry, Jiri Georg Dokoupil. . . among many others.
[text by Sylvain Despretz]