Benoit Thiel

Born in Marseilles in 1964, Benoit Thiel has been living and working since 1978 in Carnaux, in the Tarn. 

This self-taught artist worked as an industrial designer for the first 15 years of his career. He then decided to devote himself to his artistic creation and his art has encountered great success for nearly thirty years now. Benoit Thiel shows his work in many galleries and his paintings can be seen in exhibitions throughout France. 

Often compared to Pierre Soulages’s abstract art, Benoit Thiel's paintings have a base of white, black or grey. The artist then applies three or four other colours and composes a unique work.

The French artist has his own artistic universe informed by his experience; he aspires to describe past, present and future indistinctly. For each theme on which he works, Benoit Thiel paints on five or six canvases at a time. For example, there is an electric blue series called "Keep Me", another bright red series on the theme of "Hope". 

He insists that the viewer appropriate the painting. If the works are situated beyond any figurative representation, everyone is free to interpret them however they feel like, to love them or hate them. 

Benoit Thiel has developed a very personal pictorial technique in terms of colour codes, shapes and textures to convey his emotions. He also distinguishes himself from his peers by the tools he uses to create his paintings. 

On the one hand, acrylic paint became his trademark, but it is the application that may seem somewhat unusual. Brushes and easel are not part of his creative process. Benoit Thiel prefers by far everyday objects and the tools that remind him of his past design work: he uses spatulas, scrapers, sponges, teaspoons or even forks to apply and work the paint...

Find Benoit Thiel's modern paintings and discover other talented artists such as Cali Rezo and Benoît Guerin on Artsper.