Discover the contemporary work of ASSAËL

Painting is transcribing and not describing "Philippe Lejeune

Born in Marseille in 1965, since my childhood I have always drawn portraits.

After working in several painting studios in Brussels, back in France, I deepened my drawing with red chalk and charcoal, concentrating on the Portrait.

I then approached oil painting, through the study of the masters (Raphaël, Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Géricault, Rembrandt, Botticelli...).

Then I engaged in personal work.

​The face is not what is seen, but rather what is hidden. These faces loaded with mystery captivate me. I seek to decipher them, to tell them and to reinvent them.

​For several years I have also been interested in animals, in their fragility and their power. I am fascinated by the diversity of the animal world. I have explored the kudu, the ram but also the bull, and felines.

​I also work on the memory of painting, a tribute to the masters who continue to teach us lessons centuries later.

I seek to dialogue with the masters by proposing a contemporary rewriting faithful to my visual language. I thus practice the quotation and pictorial borrowing of works of art (Dürer, Botticelli, Raphael, Rembrandt, Van Eyck, Van Gogh...).

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I work in parallel on imaginary beings, elves and connected nymphs who float in an unreal universe.

I mix figuration and abstraction while drawing on the ancient techniques of oil painting and oil tempera.

Then I give free rein to my imagination.

My subjects are oversized in order to create a direct face-to-face with the viewer. They emerge from a fragmented and connected universe that I place on my canvases.

Like Kintsugi, fragmentation is a source of aesthetics, I enrich the writing by incorporating prints and signs into the heart of my canvases.

​I do not use the Portrait to paint. I try instead to use painting to transcribe the Portrait as it appears to me.

Represented by several galleries in France (Beaune, St Emilion, Toulouse, Nancy, Barbizon, La Rochelle, Caen) and in South Korea (Seoul).

I have exhibited in France, Poland, Germany, Spain, Israel, Japan and South Korea.

My works can be found in private collections in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, New Zealand, Colombia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States and  South Korea.

I have won 18 Painting prizes including the Silver Medal at the Salon des Artistes Français in 2024.

As a member of the Taylor Foundation and a member of the Salon d'Automne, I regularly participate in major exhibitions in the Paris region (Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, Salon d'Automne Champs-Elysées, Art Capital Grand Palais, Salon de l'Ecole Française, Biennale Salon Violet, Biennale de Versailles, etc.).

I have also had several solo exhibitions.