Frédéric Castaldi is a rare artist. Rare for its style combining technical rigor and offbeat subjects, humor and erudition. Rare also by the small number of works that he paints each year and which are generally immediately pre-empted by his loyal collectors. His new personal exhibition at the artfontainebleau gallery is the second since 2012. What is the profound originality of his work? From the early Renaissance to the 20th century, Frédéric Castaldi has always studied the great body painters: Botticelli, Giorgione, Titian, Goya, Picasso, Magritte, Delvaux. The works of Michelangelo, then Rosso Fiorentino or Pontormo, with almost timeless spaces, with strong colors, influenced in his work the positioning of "beautiful bodies" in the painted space, to which are added the corbeaux à corps. human. In the dream landscapes of Greek antiquity or in front of the hills of his native Auvergne, these crows, female or male, gently meet and rub shoulders with humans, most often naked, men, women, children, figures of the painter, figures of popular culture (Tintin, Gaston Lagaffe, La Marque jaune, Fantômas, etc.), in compositions combining contemporary architecture and design, interweaving of colonnades and bright colors of Renaissance masters: red, yellow, pink, green are everywhere. The love story of Beauty and the Beast according to Frédéric Castaldi, it is not realism, it is not surrealism, it is not idealism. It is a world in itself, immanent, told from painting to painting with seriousness and humor. The contact between humans and animals is close: the compositions bring together bodies at rest, walking, dancing or running. By this sharing of space, sometimes at the limit of mannerist imbalance, each one recognizes himself in part in the other and accepts his unknown part. This representation of the human being may seem utopian, but it does not deny the evil, embodied by a Fantômas both threatening and slightly ridiculous. Frédéric Castaldi's painting thus offers a humanism that escapes ideologies and creates a space welcoming various artistic references while offering a unique vision of living beings.
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