I've known and worked with Witold Pyzik for exactly twenty years. He was the first artist to be exhibited in my gallery in the rue de l'Arcade, which opened on 1 October 2003. Twenty years on, Witold's work continues to appeal to me as much as it did on the first day, and for the same reasons: the original use of rough wooden pallets to lay down nudes that look classical, the joy of using colour, the strong poetic intensity. With his imagination, Witold Pyzik concentrates in his works all that he contemplates and loves in the great history of the art of the portrait and the nude: the nudes of Titian, the Odalisques of Ingres, Olympia of Manet, the pastels of Degas, Rolla of Gervex, with their sensuality, but also the portraits of courtesans of the eighteenth century. The damaged, flayed, perforated wood́ transposes these nudes into our own time, and puts distance between them and the subject. The artist confuses us, deceives us. Were these women painted from a model, in the studio? Or from the imagination, which often sticks even closer to reality for artists. Is there a desire to represent? Or, on the contrary, to seek out the truth of these women - more rarely of these men - through these artifices? No one knows, Witold jealously guards the secret that keeps the mystery alive. No matter: we become attached to these women, near and far, who are easy to hang in our homes, in the middle of our living rooms, in our bedrooms, sometimes even in our bathrooms... Come and see Witold Pyzik's nudes, some painted in the 2000s, others very recently.
- Guillaume Sébastien
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