Anne Pourny

Painter and engraver, Anne Pourny now lives and works in Gascony, at the foot of the Pyrenees, after having worked in the Paris region.

Studies in Plastic Arts at the Martenot School of Art and at the Atelier Madhavi of the American Center in Paris. In 1985, license in History of Art and Archeology at the University of Paris X.
Teaches Plastic Arts and Art History from 1965 to 1990.
In addition to its creative work, important responsibilities within associations:
Co-founder of the Cobalt Group in 1988.
President of the “Salon d'Art Contemporain Routes" from 1993 to 1996.
Secretary General and member of the Board of Directors of the “Salon d'Automne de Paris" from 2003 to 2008 where she was President of the “Abstract Art" and “Artist's Books" Sections.
Member of the Council of Signum, an association of artists' book creators, from 2002 to 2010.
Secretary General of the French National Council of Plastic Arts
Secretary General of the French National Council of Plastic Arts, from 2002 to 2006.
Co-founder in 2013 then President of the group of artists “Le Cercle du Mont-Cenis", a network for reflection and action in the field of visual arts.
Member of the Executive Committee of the Taylor Foundation, since 2016

Internationally, elected in 2011 member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Plastic Arts (AIAP), NGO partner of UNESCO and present in 72 countries with more than 120,000 members. From 2015 to 2017, World Vice-President of AIAP and member of the Executive Committee of AIAP-Europe headquartered in Berlin.

Member of juries and guest of honor at numerous artistic events in France and abroad. Since 1987, more than one hundred personal exhibitions and nearly two hundred group exhibitions on all continents.

In the course of lyrical abstraction, Anne Pourny develops a personal expression whose main sources have been on the one hand the works of Turner and on the other hand a great interest in Asian philosophy and art. In the tradition of the painters Hartung, Kline, Willem de Kooning and Motherwell, Anne Pourny has created an extremely strong space where personal emotion is released.

Breton sea, Laotian rivers, Atacama desert, Korean temples or Norwegian fjords are today his favorite areas of inspiration and meditation, to "listen to nature, the infinitesimal and the immense at the same time ". In 2017, Anne Pourny was selected for a 2-month artist residency at the Ningbo Art Museum in China. It was a very rich artistic experience and the opportunity to take a direct look at creation in China today.

It was in Japan in 1969, with an internship with Master Kano in Kyoto, that Anne Pourny's Asian journey began. A long trip in 1972 allowed the discovery of China during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, then stays in Laos, Cambodia, and South Korea.
In 1995, as President of the Contemporary Art Fair "Routes", Anne Pourny organized in Levallois an important exhibition of 40 Chinese contemporary artists, with the participation of renowned artists such as Zao Wou Ki and Chu Teh Chun, and young talents like Chen Zen, Wang Guangyi, Wang Yan Cheng and Wang Du.

In October 2017, as Curator of the “L'Abstraction Today" exhibition organized in Paris by the Taylor Foundation, Anne Pourny selected works by 16 painters and sculptors who all express an intense vitality and internalized emotions at the deeper artists.
She considers that, thanks to abstraction: “the virtual overflows the real. The artist is able to reveal a truth hidden behind an obvious truth. The language of abstraction should be able to be one of the universal languages so badly needed by this globalist universe towards which humans are heading ".

Anne Pourny also produces numerous inks and engravings, as well as artist's books such as those composed on poems by François Cheng, the Académie Française, Salah Stétié, Catherine Renaud Baret and Emily Dickinson.