Étienne Pixa

Étienne Pixa (b. 1971, Strasbourg, France) is a Franco-German visual artist based in Berlin. Classically trained in graphic arts with a background in design and advertising, he has spent decades exploring visual expression through photography, music, and painting. His artistic practice is deeply enriched by his immersion in the film and music worlds. Over the years, he has appeared in numerous high-profile film, television, and music video productions — collaborating on set with directors such as Steven Spielberg, Roland Emmerich, Marjane Satrapi, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, and artist-filmmaker Julian Rosefeldt (Deep Gold), as well as appearing in music videos for Berlin icons like K.I.Z. and Max Raabe. These intense cinematic experiences have deeply shaped his perception of movement, lighting, atmosphere, and visual narrative. A painter since 2000, Pixa moves instinctively between abstraction and figuration. Also an active musician, he approaches the canvas much like musical improvisation: accepting risk, embracing intuition, and welcoming unexpected visual accidents. For Pixa, painting is an open-ended journey of breaking apart, rebuilding, and balancing tensions. Rather than imposing a fixed narrative, his textured acrylic compositions offer an open invitation for viewers to project their own emotions and discover their own stories.