Michel Calvet
Michel Calvet was born in 1956 in Toulouse, where he spent his youth. After his secondary education, Michel Calvet attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (student of Denax and Boyer 1974/75), and led a happy Bohemian life, indulging his passions for drawing and music.
Michel Calvet plays sax in a band and plans to become a jazz musician, so fascinated is he by the rhythm and unexpected improvisations of jazz. During this period of freedom, he felt an imperative need to create, and it was through painting that he chose to express himself.
By 1980, the success of his work enabled him to make a living solely from his art, exhibiting in Paris and the provinces. In the mid-90s, after much experimentation with color and materials, he opted for a style that suited him. From then on, he spread the paint generously from his tubes with a knife, enriching his paintings with powerful impasto alongside lighter touches, underlining the originality of his approach.
A painter of movement, he composes and rhythms his canvases with ardor, intoxicating sometimes ordinary scenes (Bayonne festivals, carnivals, jazz musicians, harbor atmospheres, street shows, bullfighting, oriental landscapes...). With a mastery bordering on abstraction, he suggests and challenges our imagination, always keeping it on the alert.
The artist's works
Depending on the place and the moment, a Calvet painting can be treated on the verge of abstraction, shapes become patches of color, colors call up other shapes or become expressionist. But whatever the treatment, none of them leaves us indifferent.
