Jean BIJOUX

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After studying at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Jean Bijoux can satisfy his passion for "painted architecture" as he likes to say. Several meetings with architects of France buildings and Parisian designers allow him to study in depth the many facets of architecture. It was at this time of his life, leaving the benches of the school and the Buraglio workshop with the congratulations of the jury, that Bijoux began his abstract compositions. He decided to paint for himself and jealously kept his paintings hidden, developing his techniques, greatly inspired by the work of Tal Coat that he discovered in the United States, or the compositions of Poliakoff, rhythmic and measured. It is also a very important element of Jean Bijoux' work related to architecture: calculation. Each of his compositions is elaborated thanks to clever methods and links between the thicknesses of the lines, their arrangements between them, their spacing ... These techniques are the result of many years of work and notebooks on composition and framing that result in a treatise on the relationship between these framing, foreground, background and verticality. If his works take up the great classical standards that punctuate the history of art, his quasi-scientific approach to the relationship between the two dimensions and the repercussions on the third dimension is quite remarkable. Around the works of Bijoux reigns the black. This monochrome is made from several colors according to a very precise recipe and unchanged for many decades, which he applies on various supports to ivory preparations. This simple duality of tones allows the artist to focus on the structure and light that he brings back thanks to the material and finely placed impasto. A discreet man in the heart of his native region and almost nestled in his studio overlooking the green valleys and limestone cliffs of the Périgord, Jean Bijoux retains this verve-filled look behind his works and his speech, letting out of his hermitage the poetry of black and ivory.