Diaquarelle n°137, 2024

Stéphane Belzère  

Son of painters Jürg Kreienbühl and Suzanne Lopata, Stéphane Belzère shows a strong interest in the preservation of flesh, the food production, the anatomical forms and the representation of body. 

In the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, he painted the brains and organs of animals preserved in formalin jars. Source of attraction and repulsion, this obsessional motif offers the possibility of a dialogue between the flesh and the material of the paint. A meticulous observation of the sediments deposited in anatomical preparation jars is at the origin of the "Long paintings"; the strata of disintegrated materials, enlarged by the magnifying effect of glasses, evoke indifferently glacial and inner landscapes, real and imaginary worlds, between figuration and abstraction. Simultaneously, he has never ceased to deal with human figure, like for example his series of 700 intimate self-portraits, called "Nocturnal reflections", executed through the reflection of his kitchen window of his Berliner studio. 

Graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris, he has been the recipient of several prizes and his research on transparency has also led him to be commissioned stained glass windows for the Rodez Cathedral. His work is part of many public and private collections: Kunstmuseum Basel, FRAC Île-de-France, Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation, Edouard and Maurice Sandoz Foundation…