Ender (1973) - Ange à capuche

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Artist: Ender (France, born 1973)

Title / subject: Hooded Angel (series: contemporary angels)

Date: 2020

Technique: mixed media — stencil, collage of fragments from urban posters on a darkened canvas

Support: canvas on stretcher

Dimensions: 40 × 40 cm

Signature: “ENDER 2020” on the back, by hand, on the canvas

Frame: custom blue frame

Glass: UltraVue UV70 anti-reflective

Hanging: hanging hardware present, ready to hang

Condition: very good overall

Original unique work, not a edition

Provenance

Private collection of modern art and Street Art of Jacques Peltzer de Breteuil (son of Countess Hélène Le Tonnelier de Breteuil and industrialist from Verviers, Georges Peltzer).

After Jacques Peltzer’s death in October 2021, his collection was dispersed by MJV Soudant, Gerpinnes, on May 1, 2022 (Auction XV, Succession — Jacques Peltzer de Breteuil Collection).

The catalog distinguished family property (Château de Breteuil, hotel on rue de Bellechasse in Paris, Château Peltzer in Verviers) and, from lots 341 to 400, the collector’s personal taste for modern art and urban art.

This work is listed there under lot 378:
“ENDER (1973). Mixed media, collages on darkened canvas. […] Private collection of modern art and Street Art Jacques Peltzer. Dimensions: 40 × 40 cm.”
Estimate: €200–€300.
Result: €700 (excluding fees).

Description of the work

A man kneels at the center of the composition. Hood down, gaze lowered, hands clasped — prayer, contemplation, or simple exhaustion, the gesture stays open. The body is treated in grayscale, almost like street stenciling: rough volumes, worn jeans, cold light on the palms.

On each side, two wings unfold, too lively for a church sky. They are made from torn poster papers, layered: cut letters, blocks of green, yellow, red, blue, white, yellowed.

One can still read fragments of the city on them — as if the angel did not spread feathers but gathered walls.

The background, a night-blue canvas stretched and matte, isolates the figure and makes the collage colors ring out. The Molitor blue frame extends this register without submerging it.

For Ender, the contemporary angel wears a hoodie. The classic theme is not parodied: it is brought into the street, then arrested on canvas before rain, municipal cleaning, or the stencil collector erases it. Here, the studio has frozen what the street condemns to disappear.

Biography

Ender was born in 1973. He spent twenty-five years in Belleville, a neighborhood already marked by Némo and Jérôme Mesnager. A professional actor for over two decades, he approaches the wall as a stage: the stencil is the character, the street the theater, the passerby the only audience.

From 2008, he pasted his interventions in Paris, then in Marseille, Strasbourg, Rome, Venice, Florence. He does not paint directly on the wall: he prepares the stencil on paper, places it, and lets the work live its short life — torn down, tagged, cleaned, sometimes stolen. This disappearance is part of the gesture.

The series follow one another. The Mariolles: children photographed by the artist, sticking out their tongues at passersby. Then gargoyles, mythological figures, finally angels — hooded angels, dropped into the present without halos. The through line is constant: borrowing a classic theme and soaking it with today’s time.

The studio work extends the street without diluting it: multi-layer stencils, collage posters, darkened canvases. His works are shown in Paris, Marseille, Strasbourg and Nice.

He participated twice in the International Festival of Contemporary Art of the Alpilles. About thirty works of urban art cite him. He is one of the few French artists selected for Planet Banksy, published in the United States in 2014. In 2013, the monograph Ender, the urban comedy, appeared, with a preface by Jef Aérosol (Opus Delits collection, Critères editions).

This 2020 Angel fully belongs to this urban theater: a kneeling body, wings made of the city, and the silence of a canvas that, for once, will not be washed at dawn.