GUILLAUME BRUÈRE

Nahmad Projects is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Guillaume Bruère, on view from 21 June – 25 July. A French artist based in Berlin, Bruère engages with European art history across borders, renovating the legacy of portraiture and narrative painting for the twenty-first century. This exhibition will showcase recent paintings from two aspects of his studio practice, the first being a group of self-portraits, the second a series of surrealist scenes combining figuration, calligraphy, and abstracted space. Known for drawing in situ from paintings in museums, the artist selects his sources instinctively and responds with a work that opens a window into his inner psyche.

On the occasion of his exhibition at Nahmad Projects, the artist writes: “Several paintings included in this exhibition are self-portraits taken from a group of fifteen works begun in January 2017. These works stem from my admiration of self-portraits by masters like Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, Van Gogh and Bacon. Self-portraits sit at the heart of my practice, and are some of the first paintings I ever made. When I arrived in Berlin in 2003, all my studies in art schools still had not taught me how to paint, so I learned alone. In this time, I travelled through Germany to study the German painters active from 1960, who represented for me, as a young French artist, a set of new possibilities for painting. Studies made within museums, particularly of portraits by German and Dutch masters, informed the development of my work. After many years of research, and having experimented with media (oil, watercolour, lacquer, spray, ink…), I developed my own painting technique using mainly acrylic (for its huge range of possibilities, and the fact it’s fast drying), with oil pastels and coloured pencils. In parallel to the large body of portraits, drawn live or from museum paintings, when I am alone in my studio, I try to represent the presence of a person, without focusing on somebody in particular. The portrait paintings in this show and the two drawings exhibited are part of this process.“

Born in Châtellerault in 1976, Bruère attended the European School of Visual Arts in Poitiers and the Nantes Fine Art School, after which he assisted artists such as Jacques Villeglé and Thomas Hirschhorn. Current museum exhibitions include a solo exhibition of museum drawings at the Kunsthaus Zürich, from 24 May – 8 September 2019, and a solo exhibition of responses to El Greco at the Museo del Greco, Toledo, from 9 April – 14 July 2019. The Picasso Museum in Antibes recently hosted a solo exhibition of Bruère drawings of Picasso portraits, from 20 April – 16 June 2019. Further institutional solo exhibitions include the Museum Làzaro Galdiano, Madrid (2019); Katholische Hochschulgemeinde, Graz (2018); Schadow Haus, Berlin (2016); Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (2016); Château de Chambord, France (2015). His work is found in prestigious museum collections including the Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, and the Städtisches Museen Zwickau, Germany Salzburg Museum, Austria, and has a strong presence in German museum collections, including the Kunstsammlung des Deutschen Bundestages, Berlin, Germany; MARTa Herford, Germany; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany; Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany. French museums holding Bruère’s work in their collections include the Musée des Beaux-Arts Eugène Leroy, Tourcoing, France; Fondation Vincent Van Gogh / Maja Hoffmann, Arles, France; Domaine National de Chambord, France. This year the artist has been honoured with the Conrad-Ferdinand-Meyer-Preis award and a residency at the Musée Picasso in Antibes. Past awards include the Hans-Platschek-Preis für Kunst und Schrift (2013) and a residency at the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh in France (2013).