KiKo
Manuel Fernandez, alias KiKo, is a French artist born in 1985 in Martigues, in this commune near Marseille nicknamed the « Venise Provençale » which inspires his Mediterranean colors and more particularly this burning orange that inundates many of his works.
KiKo has always had a taste for drawing. As a child, it is said that he draws as he breathes. With a single, assertive stroke, he sketches the emotions that they do not express with words. School only passionate him in plastic arts classes and his path seems therefore all traced. But art is not a subject in this family of sailors who have first a passion for the sea and especially that of tuna fishing.
From a very young age, KiKo therefore joins the family tuna boats, giants of the seas 30m long moored in Port-Vendres, leaving his pencils for fishing nets; one does not leave the ship like that! Older, he will leave for months at sea, tracking schools of fish colonized by tuna. He learns discipline, fear management, resilience, teamwork, lack of sleep, and solitude. To escape this harsh life of sailors where the sea constantly reminds him of the order, KiKo builds an imaginary universe where the childhood that suspends its flight will inspire all his work.
If KiKo's success is dazzling, it is because he immediately affirms a recognizable artistic DNA at first glance. To his Chinese inks, a simple artistic approach is added, in the sense of limpid, authentic, and committed to the image of the artist. KiKo only paints to create the emotion that will revive our inner child. Thus, in 2017, when he decides to devote himself entirely to his passion for art, he symbolically chooses « KiKo », his childhood nickname as his artist name.
All of KiKo's art is a tribute to childhood and to the privileged place it should have in the heart of all the children of the world. A fervent defender of the protection of children and the respect of their fundamental rights, he is involved in numerous charitable works and wishes that his art contribute to a stronger mobilization for childhood. For if the sea has stolen KiKo's childhood, art allows him to (re)live it with each brushstroke.
The works of Kiko
