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Tanagra

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Tanagra

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From 01/07/2010to 01/12/2010
Tanagra has not follow a traditional path and has not been to art school in the strict sense of the term. In 1966, she meets the man who becomes her teacher at the Atelier of Artists in the Ordener City (Montmartre, Paris). She works ten years with him, learning, perfecting her techniques, searching for her way of expression. She draws, paints, does not exhibit, focuses on research for nearly 15 years. It was during a trip to West Africa in 1980, that Tanagra discovers unequivocally the mode of expression to which she remains faithful until today; black and white binding on her (graphite, charcoal).
The artist emerges from the shadows, participating in her first group exhibitions (the Biennial of Young Mediterranean painting - Ponchettes Gallery, Nice) before her personal exhibitions are organized. The art of Tanagra is rooted in the history of her own life, her upbringing and her experiences; she draws her vocation in the history of the ancients. Her world, an exploration of the interior, bathes in the mystery (this is an infinite aspect of reality). "My approach is philosophical and is inspired by secular and sacred. It is a painting inhabited by a surreal mind," writes Tanagra.
The artist is considered to be unclassifiable and off trend, forges her own writing, somewhere in between classical and contemporary. The foundations of her practice of painting are the clear-obscure (a method developed in the Renaissance), the work on shadow and light; and the “glacis” (glazing technique which allows her to obtain transparency and depths), a path parallel and solidary, comes to her at the beginning of 2000.
The “glacis” of Tanagra, sober and very deep, are made of a remarkable intensity; her white or pale yellow arise gradually from blacks and browns, creating a dimension that fluctuates between past and future, between real and unreal.
Tanagra participates in the elaboration of two works done in collaboration with the poet Pascal Payen Appenzeller ("
Dans les sables des sommeil", Ed Tipaza, Cannes, 1998 and "Les ombres nous envahissent", Ed. Le Dormeur du Val, 2001).

Tanagra likes cats; her life is lonely (Isn’t she used to say that she married the painting?); she lives and works in Vallauris (Alpes-Maritimes).
She is part of "L'Atelier 49" which organizes events on contemporary art, whether visual arts, music, poetry and publishing.
"Shrine of clear-obscure. Theater of hope and despair, writing about impulses and a memory that weaves its web over the darkness," writes Tanagra.



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