Jean Arcelin

Jean Arcelin was born in Paris in June of 1962.

While studying at Charpentier, a licensed art history school at the Sorbonne, Arcelin worked with teachers who developed his taste for seventeenth and eighteenth century painting. He considers painting to be a dialogue with his contemporaries. Arcelin uses references, like Baroque, in order to create an effect, striving to make each painting a fully-fledged world where viewers can travel and find ideas. The spaces in the paintings are alive and are executed with rapid and spontaneous gesture. Landscapes edge with the urban sea, and combine with portraitist gesture. He takes corners of Paris, cafe chairs piled up in the angle of view of a monument, or the dressing room of a theatre, and portrays them empty of all human presence. An Arcelin painting can be a false realistic: it is figurative without becoming complex.

He has exhibited regularly in France and Switzerland since 1990 and teaches painting in Paris.