Etienne Assénat

Etienne Assénat is a French painter, Parisian.

He grew up in Saint-Germain des Près, born to a father who was a professor at Polytechnique and a housewife. His universe was always that of the arts. His father (excellent violinist) and his mother always encouraged him to create.

With no education and living opposite the Louvre museum, Etienne Assénat spent all his childhood playing in the square courtyard and "hanging out" in the museum which at that time was deserted in the morning when it opened. Impregnated with paint long before looking at it, with a first memory of his father hoisting him in his arms to the height of Watteau's The Indifferent , favorite painting and wonderful symbol of the 18th French! Over time, the painting slowly became inscribed, inked. Always the Louvre, so often, meetings with old copyists and endless discussions.

At the age of 16 and on dispensation, he passed the competitive examination for the National School of Decorative Arts to be admitted in 1970. It was an unexpected experience for him. By this time, the school had undergone a number of changes and was no longer exactly what he expected. Magnificent courses in History of Art, materials and textures, but only three hours of drawing per week ...

After two years of school, he had the opportunity to show a dozen drawings and paintings to the Filipacchi group, which immediately gave him illustrations to be produced for magazines such as 20ans, Lui, Playboy.

Very quickly, the desire to paint takes over the fact of illustrating.

After a few years of illustrations, a tragic event occurs. His uncle, also a painter, commits suicide and bequeaths him a collection of old fabrics (18th century). He was in talks with the Metropolitan Museum in New York who wanted to acquire it in order to enrich its collections. The latter will buy part of it from him. Several other sales will be made (Fashion Institute of Technology, Parsons School of Design, Cooper-Hewitt, Hartford Museum as well as numerous style offices). Great opportunity to meet the curators and to see some very fine collections in private. This inheritance, this sale, could arise at the wishes of the painter, at this necessity which painting had become.

During a trip to New York, he decides to stay there much longer and stay there six months. The gallery owner Shafrazy offers him a workshop on 42nd Street. We are in 1984. Etienne Assénat will only devote himself to painting.

Back in Paris, he was given the opportunity to have a workshop in the old fridges of the City of Paris. Workshop he still occupies today. The first exhibitions start in 1986. Many others will follow.

For Etienne Assénat, painting must be an enigma, a statement can never replace the painting! As Daniel Arasse says so well, we can consider “painting as non-verbal thought”. Never think that the subject can be a solution to reveal what a painting is. Admittedly the idea of the treasure hunt comes up very often and is always tempting, but the very existence of the painting remains undeniable. So, talking in silence through the language of thought is perhaps what painting offers.

Without forgetting Paul Claudel for whom painting is nothing other than the praise of silence