SACHA LYS - Le Premier pétale

SACHA LYS - Mixed media: pigment ink print, brush-applied varnish by hand, for the durable protection of the work.

A young man with a bare chest stands facing forward, head turned to the side and gaze beyond the frame, dark curls on the forehead. One hand rises against the chest and grips a red rose by the thorny stem, still clad in its leaves; the other arm hangs down and crosses the lower abdomen. The white sleeve of a shirt clings only to the forearm, creased into a cuff; at the waist, a dark blue fabric. Against the arm, at the lower belly, rests a dark red petal. Behind him, a wall brushed with slate blue and chalky white.
The figure is held up close, cut off below the navel, and nothing grounds it: no place, no furniture, no narrative. The painting does not aim to seduce the model but to emphasize the gap between a body painted with complete accuracy and a background that was never finished. The petal resting on the skin speaks for the rest: the flower has already begun to fall apart while it is being held.
Slate blues and linen grays in the background, crossed by chalky white brushed in broad vertical strokes; the flesh tones remain in ivory and pale pinks, and the fabric at the waist descends to a night blue almost black. The red appears only in the flower, its petal and the mouth, built up in deep layers to the dark garnet of the shadows. The material is most densely applied in the background and in the white forearm fabric, brushed in thick impasto, while the skin is smooth with no tool marks.
Mixed media: pigment ink print, brush-applied varnish by hand, for the durable protection of the work.
Varnish applied by hand, for the depth of the blues and the durable protection of the work.
Support: premium canvas stretched on a wooden frame, ready to hang.
Format: 40 × 60 cm.
Signed SACHA LYS · Galerie Labo Joconde / Atelier Joconde · certificate of authenticity provided.

SACHA LYS is one of the creations bringing together artists Le Yack, Neo Pablo and Popsan within Atelier Joconde, a family studio where three sensibilities coexist: neo-realism, pop, and free figuration. The name Sacha does not indicate boy or girl, and the lily is a white flower: the series rests on these two words. She paints young men with bare chests, dark curls and a diverted gaze, to whom a flower is entrusted — a crown of white flowers placed on the hair, a red rose pressed against the chest — and on whose skin a petal has already fallen. The complexion is treated with the precision of academic portraiture, while the background is brushed, scratched, and left unfinished: slate blues, chalk whites, vertical drips. Pre-Raphaelite and symbolist lineage, that of the beflowered youth and beauty seized at the moment it begins to fall apart, here held in a modern approach where the figure is finished and the world around it is not.

Each work is a unique piece.
Instagram @atelierjoconde.

Keywords: SACHA LYS, red rose, fallen petal, bare chest, male portrait, androgynous, flowers, brushed background, Pre-Raphaelite, symbolism, contemporary French art, Le Yack, Atelier Joconde