Aldehy: from portrait to icon

The French artist Aldéhy began his career as a painter in 1975 in the South Pacific (Vanuatu). The colours of his paintings still willingly steal the light. Where one thinks, of course, of Gauguin. But wrongly so!

Back from Amazonia after having spent 5 years in an isolated village in the N'Djouka country from 2013 to 2018, he sets up his studio in Soustons in the Landes.  Whoever expects to see scenes of intimate indigenous life captured on the spot will however be surprised. For Aldéhy's purpose is elsewhere. Both in our here and our there. Or even on the edge of the cliff between the two.

The result is astonishing onlookers with aura as well as icons as if on acid. What Aldéhy delightfully calls: "figurative, narrative and symbolic painting". A lover of games of chance, the artist likes to let his subjects spill out of the canvas to create thematic exhibitions.