Atelier Cléophée

A Parisian artist specialised in the art of pastel, Atelier Cléophée constructs her works as visions that she imagines to be preparatory to stained glass windows or haute couture and interior design fabrics.

Her work is at the crossroads of abstraction and figuration. Atelier Cléophée uses pigment powder, which barely holds on to the paper but which reveals the most subtle nuances of tone better than any other pictorial substance, to create a world of shapes and colours rooted in the primordial energy of matter. The aim of her work is to question our relationship with the elements - both tangible and imaginary - and their scarcity in the age of the Anthropocene and the ecological challenge. 

Pastel is seen as a trace, an imprint. Her keyboard of pastels allows her to compose motifs, spaces, architectures of pure colours, games of superimposition, like so many attempts to capture light. 

Atelier Cléophée's work draws on iconography and snapshots collected during her travels - Italy occupying a central place - and her studies in art history, which took her from the Villa Medici in Rome to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, via the Centre Pompidou and haute joaillerie houses.