About Alain Senez

Alain Senez set himself the task of acquiring an intimate knowledge of both the composition and the techniques of the great painters of the past, from Titian to Renoir, via Delacroix to Turner. Senez' newest paintings reflect a clear, if oblique acknowledgement of his debt to the past masters. For instance Corot, though Senez' compositions typically blend imaginary elements with precise observation and a powerful ability to evoke a strong sense of place.He was born in 1948 in Paris. When the family moved to Provence, Senez was accepted at the art school in Aix at the exceptionally young age of 14 on the strength of an outstanding talent. In 1965, Senez won the Granet prize for art and painting. The following year he won the Granet prize for sculpture and in 1966, Senez moved back to Paris to study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Beaux Arts. There Senez won numerous art prizes: for monumental artistic painting, monumental sculpture, architecture and perspective. At the age of 19, he taught perspective drawing in the school of architecture. In 1968, Senez won the Grand Prix Rocheron for landscape painting, as well as the Fortin d'Ivry prize awarded by the Institute of France and was favourite and runner-up in the Prix de Rome, attracting enthusiastic notice from Balthus. Senez' creative activities were interrupted by military service, which he spent in Africa. On his return, after a spell of teaching in the south of France, he moved north again to Paris in 1974, and thereafter to Belgium, where he immersed himself in a study of the techniques of the Flemish art masters. This basic research, which spanned several years, brought him to examine the very foundations of Western figurative art. The arresting vistas within vistas and enigmatic trompe l'oeil effects in his paintings are evocative of a distant, antique age. Classically inspired, Senez frequently employs visual references to classical sculpture and architecture within his compositions.