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Acclaimed French artist Jean Duranel brings his unique and whimsical vision of the world to Connecticut in this exhibition of recent paintings and sculptures.
Titled “La Vie de Chateau,” the exhibition marks Duranel’s second appearance at the Good News Café Gallery and follows a successful show held in April and May at the Galerie Duchoze in Rouen, France. Over the past four decades, his paintings and sculptures have been presented in numerous one-man shows in Paris and other cities across France, as well as Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Japan, and the United States. His works have become part of a significant number of private, public and museum collections in France and around the world.
Born in the French town of Fécamp in 1946, Duranel traces his artistic beginnings to the days of his youth when, easel perched on his bicycle, “I used to run away from the usual world to draw landscapes and seasides.” At the age of 20 he received his first artistic prize at Harfleur, and he graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Rouen and later in Paris. In 1974, he received the coveted “Medaille d’Or” from the town of Le Havre for his artistic work.
The French art guide Art Actif observes that “Duranel paints with a great deal of humor. His colorful painting expresses itself in a style that is perfectly shaped by a personal vision. At ease as much in large as in small formats, Duranel seduces us from the start with a coup d’oeil. This discipline in forms, this gaiety of colors, this purety of lines seem to offer at first glance a universe filled with hope and joie de vivre.” A closer look at his works, Art Actif says, reveals layers of complexity in feeling and emotion “in a world in motion."
“The painting of Jean Duranel is a permanent invitation to dream,” declare the artist notes for a previous exhibition by the artist at Le Cercle Bleu gallery in Metz, France. “An ephemeral dream during which all becomes possible in a world that mocks all logic. Perfectly the master of his medium, Jean Duranel takes us on a voyage across colorful sequences where each moment is magical, without ever losing contact with our everyday life.”
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