Diane Benoit du Rey, a French painter born in 1989, embodies a contemporary and resolutely captivating vision of painting. A 2014 graduate of the École des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg (HEAR), she quickly made a name for herself with her unique artistic approach and constant quest for innovation in oil painting. After her studies, Diane devoted herself to an essential period of creative reflection, taking part in artistic residencies, notably in Brittany and Kenya, which have profoundly influenced her work.
In 2023, she had her first solo exhibition at Le Feuvre & Roze gallery. This success marks a turning point in her career, followed by her invitation to exhibit at the Espace Richaud in Versailles, a major institutional recognition.
While the airbrush, often used in painting for its atmospheric blur, dominates certain contemporary practices, Diane Benoit du Rey chooses to follow a timeless pictorial tradition: oil painting. This demanding, meticulous technique reflects not only a work philosophy, but also a quest for excellence in execution and rendering.
Diane proceeds by superimposing layers, starting with bold, vibrant bases, often close to fluorescent, which she gradually attenuates in a subtle build-up of nuances. This process, both instinctive and methodical, echoes the depth of her artistic commitment. Her work on gradation, achieved with increasingly fine brushes, incorporates an element of improvisation, an almost meditative connection with the canvas.
Using digital tools to sketch out the broad chromatic lines, she nevertheless claims total freedom in her choice of colors and gestures, leaving room for intuition and the present moment.
The works of Diane Benoit du Rey invite you on a visual and emotional journey. Her pictorial universe, fluid and moving, captures the eye and guides it between curves and gradations. Tones merge with a harmony that evokes natural flows, like the meeting of a river and a stream.
The dimensions of his canvases, often imposing, engage in a dialogue with the body and the surrounding space. Her monumental fresco in Vitry-sur-Seine, measuring 30 meters high by 11 meters wide, illustrates her exploration of scale and the interaction between art and urban architecture. Diane approaches each project with an in-depth reflection on space, conceiving immersive pictorial installations that transcend the traditional limits of the frame, as in her collaboration with the famous Bucherer house in Paris.
"Let yourself float, as if you were somewhere else in the middle of nowhere," she says to describe the effect of her works. This hypnotic movement is the very essence of her art, where the viewer is invited to get lost, to be absorbed by the depth and fluidity of the colors.
Diane Benoit du Rey is an up-and-coming artist whose work is increasingly popular with art lovers and institutions alike. Her ability to marry tradition and modernity, to offer immersive visual experiences and to push back the boundaries of painting, makes her a key figure on the contemporary art scene.
Photo credits: Studio Marie Levi
Diane Benoit du Rey makes light much more than a simple pictorial effect: she turns it into a living material, in constant transformation. Through her oil painting technique, she explores the way light dialogues with color, creating subtle transitions between brilliance and softness.
His creative process is based on successive layers, where vibrant hues, often close to fluorescent, serve as the basis for patient, methodical gradation work. This play of contrasts shapes a light that seems to emanate from within the canvas, expanding into space. Each shade becomes a luminous particle, and the transitions from one hue to another evoke natural phenomena such as dawn breaking, a wave refracting or the glow of a river under the sun.
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