I had the pleasure of presenting my first exhibition of the works of the artist Thierry Lefort. His paintings were presented in an ephemeral space in the Marais, for five days only.
"Si j’aime tant courir c’est que ma vie est à l’arrivée" Oil on canvas, 146 x 89 cm
Thierry Lefort, at the age of twelve, virgin of any theoretical and technical learning, turns spontaneously to the painting. Pencils, brushes, pastels: he uses all that passes to him under the hand to carry out his first drawings and his first fabrics. Painting is for him the ideal means of expression to apprehend the world, its light, its colors and its beauty. Admirer of Cézanne, he faithfully applies his credo according to which "to paint from nature is not to copy slavishly, it is to realize one's sensations". Painting is therefore his sensations, a light that dazzles him and a vision that touches him.
Lefort's painting is not devoid of a certain spirituality sometimes encountered in other cultures. Indeed, in 1997 and 2000, he travelled through the province of Henan in China, cradle of Chinese civilization and kungfu. Then, it is by the means of the calligraphy and inspired by China and Japan, that he develops still more his pictorial art by seeking to paint in a way "effective, powerful and purified".
From then on, Thierry Lefort directs himself towards a painting that some will qualify as "Renaissance of the Figuration", with all that it comprises of simplicity, elegance and purity. Thierry Lefort in his studio in front of an oil on canvas, 180 x 180 cm
The force and the characteristic of Thierry Lefort reside not only in his technique but also in his re-reading of the world which surrounds him, in particular the industrial and urban world. He paints his pictures in situ, carrying an enthusiastic glance on places as diverse and anodyne as stations, factories, bridges, parking lots. Often, in the representations he makes of these places, the human seems absent, yet we suspect it. In his painting, everything is conducive to the rediscovery of beauty in everyday life. He privileges to seize the world in its globality, in the intensity and the accuracy of its lights, its forms and its colors. It is not necessary to be mistaken there, Thierry Lefort does not seek to deliver a faithful image of the decoration, the landscapes or the cities which he paints, with Thierry Lefort it is not the Painting which serves the landscape, but well the landscape - with its lines, its dark or dazzling masses, its colors and its forms - which serves the Painting to allow the perfect balance of the composition.
Among the notable places which presented the paintings of Thierry Lefort, let us note the Constantine Palace of Saint-Petersburg, in Russia and, twice, the Museum of modern art of Tokyo, in Japan. In September 2021, Yoyo Maeght dedicates to him, in Paris, an important exhibition where are privileged the recent works that California inspires him. This first collaboration is accompanied by the publication of three limited edition prints.
