Lagune, 2020

Philippe Demenet  

Philippe Demenet (artist name: DeMenet) is a French painter, born in 1952, who lives in the Paris region. His studio work is inspired by photographs taken intentionally, or by sketches. Moving beyond these images, he throws onto the canvas vibrant, ever-shifting interlacing of values and colors. His themes belong to Nature (water above all) or to the Figure (silhouettes gathered, faces encountered).

His vocation solidified in the late 1960s, in an attic apartment in the Montparnasse district, where the sculptor Claude Bouscau, a Prix de Rome winner, held a benign sway over his models and a group of artists as talented as they were eccentric. Admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, DeMenet would not remain there long. The school system, after 1968, was in decline.

This was followed by a long period of extensive travel in turbulent lands. During his career as a journalist, he wielded the pen, but also the pastel, sketching scenes and landscapes. This palette of emotions would later inspire his "Presence-Absence" series.

Several painters and workshop mentors helped him solidify his commitment to colorism. Through his flat planes of juxtaposed pigments that echo or clash with one another, DeMenet evokes the joyful and mysterious power of the elements, beginning with water, ever-changing, elusive yet constant and reassuring. This would become the basis of the "Voices of Water" series.

His masters are named Jawlensky, Munch, Per Kirkeby, Markus Luperz or Peter Doig.

Since 2005, DeMenet has regularly exhibited his paintings in various locations, in France and abroad.