Jean-Marc Bustamante

Jean-Marc Bustamante, born June 4, 1952 in Toulouse, is a French artist.

Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and at the ENSBA in Paris, he was appointed director of the latter school in September 2015.

Jean-Marc Bustamante first undertook studies in economics, before learning photography, in particular with Denis Brihat, still life photographer, then with William Klein, whose assistant he became in the mid-1970s. .

From 1978, he produced large-format color photographs, which he called “Tables". It is mainly landscapes at the edge of cities in the suburbs of Barcelona that will establish its reputation.

Since the 1980s, his work has developed through a constant exchange between sculpture, painting and photography.

In 1983, he met the sculptor Bernard Bazile with whom he worked for three years, under the name of Basilebustamante. In heterogeneous forms, they pose the question of the object in pairs, beyond the disciplines.

This experience led him to develop free and very open work. From photography to object, he multiplies innovative visual proposals in all its forms. He sets up from the "photographic", which remains the essence of his work, visual devices.

In 1997, “Something is missing" is a series of photographs taken in different cities that the title of the works does not allow to identify. Bustamante seeks there simple forms which have a pictorial resonance.

More recently, Plexiglas has become the favored medium for his work and the artist reveals a deep interest in color.

Likewise, for the 2003 Venice Biennale, where he represents France, he transforms the space of the pavilion, recreating a world that is both real and imaginary where the play of mirrors, floating images, photographic portraits, places of sculptures move the limits of the gaze, both physical and psychological.

During the major exhibition in 2006 at the Brégence museum, he took over the four floors of the museum, also creating a luminous device outside the building. and the recent collaboration he has undertaken with the American artist Ed Rusha for the exhibition entitled “L'horizon chimérique" at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg.

In 2011, a retrospective exhibition of his sculptures and photographs took place at the Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds, as well as a presentation of his latest work at the Medici Villa in Rome and in Venice during the next biennial. In the years 2012 and 2013, he intensified the practice of painting, producing several series of paintings that he exhibited around the world.

On December 7, 2016, Jean-Marc Bustamante was elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts, Painting section, in the chair previously occupied by Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013).