Michel Calvet
Michel Calvet was born in 1956 in Toulouse, the city where he spent his youth. After his secondary studies, Michel Calvet attended the School of Fine Arts (student of Denax and Boyer 1974/75), and led a happy bohemian life, indulging in his passions: drawing and music.
Michel Calvet played the saxophone in a band and considered becoming a jazz musician, as jazz with its rhythm and unexpected improvisations fascinated him. During this period of freedom, he felt an imperative need for creation, and it was through painting that he chose to express himself.
From 1980, the success of his works allowed him to live solely from his art, exhibiting in Paris and in the provinces. In the mid-1990s, after numerous experiments with color and material, he opted for a style that suited him. It was then that he generously applied paint from his tubes with a knife to enrich his canvases with powerful, emotive touches, highlighting the originality of his approach.
As a painter of movement, he composed and rhythmically arranged his canvases with fervor, intoxicating scenes sometimes of ordinary life (Bayonne festivals, Carnivals, jazz musicians, port scenes, street performances, bullfights, orientalist landscapes...). He suggested and challenged our imagination with a mastery bordering on abstraction, always keeping it alert.
The artist's works
Depending on the place and moment, a Calvet painting can be treated to the limit of abstraction, with forms becoming patches of color, colors calling for other forms, or becoming expressionist. But regardless of the treatment, none of his works leave one indifferent.
