The Hotel Victoire Vence Cote Azur - Discover Matisse, and our other local artists.

Our artists

Little bits of paper

Picasso and Braque revolutionised painting by sticking paper directly onto the canvas.

Laurent Gerbert creates his art in the form of collages made from old newspaper, wrappers, Thai paper and rice paper.

The artist, Gerbert, often adds fine strips of metal, either to accentuate the grain of the paper or to give strength to what would otherwise seem to be fragile work. And out of these interlacing creases and folds, these opalescent veins of rice paper and this secret geology emerges a very poetic art form.

Sometimes, with his use of oil paint, of gouache, of different shades of blue or the brightness of gold leaf, we can even imagine faces, towns, or Paradise islands emerging from his collages. Far from being representational, Gerbert’s work never ceases to evoke phantoms from the past, visions from the future or the feeling of a presence.

“L’Eclaireur” (the Scout) a collage using paper from a very old daily newspaper bearing the same name, is a family ”novel” evoking the themes of twin births and the father - child relationship.
 
Note how appropriate the frames are, that they do not crush the collages but rather give them space to breathe in!  

J. GUITTEAUD