Harpies, 2011

Françoise Pétrovitch   Famous Artists

Born in 1964 in Chambéry, Françoise Pétrovitch lives and works in Cachan, outside of Paris. She teaches in Paris at l'École Estienne, known as the Estienne School of Graphic Arts and Industries (ESAIG). The school prepares young creators in the trades of printing, communication design and the art of book.

Drawing holds a significant place among the different materials that Françoise Pétrovitch uses - ceramic, glass, lavis, painting, edition or more recently video clips. It reveals the plastic economy marked by the exactness (of the line, the frank choice of the color), the absence of comments and the preservation of the viewer (in order to enter the universe). Drawing is in the heart of Françoise Pétrovitch's artistic practice. Representing the liberty and spontaneity of a gesture that immediately translates the thought of the artist.

Through her drawings, engravings, paintings and sculptures, Françoise Pétrovitch shows an ambivalent universe where childhood images are replaced by strange figures playing with the boundaries between female and male, humans and animals.

By means of sculpture, photography and mostly drawing, Françoise Pétrovitch gives life to hybrid forms, scary without looking like, animals and humans - women, teenagers, children - and reveals intimate beings inhabited by their thoughts and secret wounds.

The artist was the subject of a remarkable exhibition at the BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) from October 2022 to January 2023. The BnF presented about a hundred key pieces of her graphic work, including prints, drawings and sketches.