Francine

The Artist

As a child, Francine’s grandfather, a simple but insightful man, sees in her certain disposition for art and asks her to make a daily drawing. Every night she had to show this sketch to her grandfather, and she strives to improve them day by day. This obligation, so to speak, has been the foundation, the seed, of his passion for painting and her desire to make others feel an emotion or question the world, open a different vision to them. “Whenfacing a painting, what counts (for the spectator) is not what the artist wanted to express and which only concerns him, but what he (the spectator) feels himself. And one does not prevent the other”.

As a child, she also writes. Little fairy stories that she illustrates as in her storybooks. The link between writing and drawing is created and later, between writing and painting. She continues to write texts, draft and novels, but without attaching or following them. It’s in South America that she begins to really write (in order to publish) a novel inspired by the regret or lack of the distant seasons, under that uniform climate. This first book, abandoned for a long time, is still being written as she writes other books including themes already overflown years ago.

Following her studies at the Beaux-Arts in Geneva and practicing with the painter Georges Aubert, she goes to Florence and takes painting lessons at the Academy and works at an old sculptor’s studio, in which there is a reminiscence of those of the Italian Renaissance. She plans to leave for Madrid but in the meantime, she has the unexpected opportunity to meet, during the summer, Salvador Dali and stay at Port Lligat for a few days. He will advise her to stop her studies: “The problem is now between your web and you”. She begins her professional artist life with highs and lows, going from gallery to gallery presenting her works, possibilities, refusals, sales and exhibitions.

Artistic approach

Starting from surrealism, this semantic painting is a conscious work with the great symbols and archetypes that govern the collective unconscious, in an attempt to widen the field of consciousness beyond its usual limits.

More than thirty years in South America and maternity disconnect her from the art world, although she continues to create and sells, private orders arriving regularly. Returning to Europe, restarts her work and she devotes more time to writing and painting. A painting is often like a picture, an instant of a story to write. And a novel is the development of a cliché luckily taken and of which we would like to know the hidden reality. And to know it, one writes.

Background

1954: 2 years with the painter Georges Aubert at Geneva
1956: 2 years at the Geneva School of Fine Arts
1958: 1 year at the Academy of Fine Arts at Florence
1959: 2 months with Salvador Dalí (staff) in Port Lligat, Spain

Events/Exhibitions

2017 Group exhibition. Entropy Vol. 2. Ottovolarte Art lab. Florence, Italy.
2017 Group exhibition. The June 2017 exhibition. Thuillier Gallery. Paris, France.
2012 Collective exhibition, La Florimontaine. Petit-Lancy. Geneva, Switzerland.
2006 Espace Art & Décoration, Carouge, Switzerland.
2005 Mélisande Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland.
1999 Helvetia College, Bogotá, Colombia.
1999 Ministry of Foreign Relations, Bogotá Colombia.
1998 Javeriana University, Bogotá Colombia.
1994 Sala de la Cultura, Soacha Colombia.
1989 Galerie Motte, Geneva.
1986 Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispanica, Bogotá, Colombia.
1983 Regional Exhibition of Culture, Tunja, Colombia.
1970 In Wolfsburg, Germany.
1967 Galerie André Sangsue, Geneva, Switzerland.