Toro XV, 2025

Frédérique Assaël  

I have always drawn portraits. From my scientific studies I have kept a concern for rigor that I use in the drawing and composition of my paintings.

At the end of the 1990s, I worked in several painting workshops in Brussels. Back in France, I went deeper into red chalk and charcoal drawing, focusing on Portrait. Then it was in Hélène Legrand's studio in St Germain-en-Laye that I approached oil painting, through the study of masters (Raphaël, Leonardo da Vinci, Le Caravaggio, Balthus, Picasso ...).

I then engaged in personal work. I do not try to reproduce reality but rather to transpose my vision in a range which is clean for me. I try to decipher the portrait, to tell it and to reinvent it.

I mix figuration and abstraction while drawing on ancient techniques. This is how I can give free rein to my imagination.

I focus on what is most vulnerable and sensitive to me: the Portrait. I oversize my characters in order to create a direct face-to-face. The technique is only a means to help me express what I feel and to try to understand the portait.

I create a fragmented universe that I put on canvases that I make, from which my portraits emerge. I do not use the Portrait to paint but I try to use the paint to transcribe the Portrait as it appears to me.

Member of the Taylor Foundation, Associate of the Salon d'Automne, I regularly participate in major Parisian salons (Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, Salon d'Automne Champs-Elysées, Art Capital Grand Palais, Salon de l'Ecole Française, Biennale Salon Violet , Versailles Biennale ...). Several personal exhibitions have also been dedicated to me.