Emmanuelle Pellet - À dada…

Emmanuelle Pellet - À dada…
Acrylic painting - Original signed - 2012
H: 18.8 cm W: 28.8 cm

About the work:

In a vivid and theatrical composition, a naïve creature with manly features rides a giant cat. The chromatic contrast — acid green in the background and ochre yellow on the ground — sets up a clear, almost unreal light typical of a dreamlike and satirical pictorial universe. The character, eyes wide open and hair spiked, firmly holds a rope or improvised reins, in a posture that is both comic and vulnerable. The feline, posed in a broad and muscular movement, looks the spectator in the eye, with an almost ferocious intensity, its blue eye piercing the space of the painting.

The artist plays with the codes of classical animal painting — the fur finely modeled, the cat’s anatomy rendered with precision — to bend them toward a fantastical and humorous register. This tension between technical virtuosity and narrative absurdity gives the work a singular visual strength, between fable and caricature.

This piece is part of a narrative and whimsical vein, comparable to the currents of contemporary fantasy realism or pop-surrealism.

About the artist:

Historian of art by training, Emmanuelle Pellet studied at the École du Louvre and then at the Sorbonne before qualifying for the Aggregation in Visual Arts (3rd place). After several years of teaching, she joined the Louvre Museum as head of educational outreach.
Her works have been exhibited in galleries in Paris, London, Singapore and Mauritius. They have been the subject of numerous publications and are now held in private collections in Europe, North America, Asia and the Indian Ocean.