Biography
Artworks
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Henri Beaufour

France • 1965

Biography

The works of Henri Beaufour, a multifaceted artist, initially take shape in the marble quarries of Carrara, in a timeless encounter that allows him to imbue matter with flesh. This formative period, seminal to his practice, is enriched by more classical training in medicine and art school, which provide him with the tools needed for representing the body. He is tireless in assessing the contemporary state of the world, eschewing stylistic effects and expressing the permanence of disillusionment: a post-modern dystopia in which individuals are left to their own devices and to their fears, ambitions, aborted dreams, and wanderings. It is through the full range of his experiments—paintings, engravings, drawings, ceramics—and across a diversity of styles with only their expressionist power in common that the artist succeeds in extracting salient features from a filterless reality.

Beaufour is also fond of juxtaposing the human with the animal: seeking counterpoints that allow us to better understand ourselves, thus illustrating metamorphoses between species and the anthropomorphisms that characterise the porosity of living categories within our 'civilisation'. His expressionism is uncompromising, limitless, and pushes the boundaries of good taste, neither presupposing critical reception nor following the crowd with respect to contemporary narratives. It is through a free and obsessive protocol, through archetypal schemas of confinement that, though circular, still produce a veritable corpus of vibrant beings, that Beaufour creates his considerable gallery of characters. His characters are transfigured within a universal mythology, one shaped by his deep cultural immersion. When viewers dare to confront the irony and discomfort that so often emanate from Henri Beaufour's works, they are struck by his alternative perspective and singular 'composition' of the world—a powerful, intuitive vision of our times.

Nationality

French artists