Eugénie Paultre

Eugénie Paultre is a French artist and writer, best known for her striped work across media, from poetry to video which reckons with the most fundamental impulses towards art, emotion and transcendence. Coming to art after years of studying philosophy, she explains: "I studied philosophy for ten years to try to discover the truth of thought, the righteousness of spirit, but also, and more importantly, to try to understand why the Western world had lost its way and to discipline and reassure myself. But to no avail. The emotions were too strong. I could not hold them at bay, I had to work with them. […] And so at the age of 30, I entered into the service of colour."

Born in Paris in 1979, Paultre initially pursued studies in the humanities and philosophy, earning an aggregation in philosophy in 2007 and later undertaking doctoral research at the Sorbonne. Beginning to paint in 2010, Paultre eventually hit upon her distinctive striped canvases: “…one day I turned a painting of the sea and I saw the skyline on the vertical and something inside me said: this is it. I began to paint coloured lines by hand, using Sellotape before gradually moving over to a ruler, and in these lines, in this repetition, there was a je ne sais quoi which I couldn’t put into words”.

Composed of stripes of varied palettes, for Paultre colour has a particular emotional, yet evasive power. Beginning with small-scale striped works, she began to create larger canvases in 2018, during a 6-month residency at Damien Hirst's workshop in Chalford. For Paultre, working on a larger scale was not just about size: “…large is not simply bigger, it is not a number, a mere measure. It is another dimension. The relationships between things, colours for instance, change, and another meaning appears.”

There, she developed her series, Dying for Limits, Safe and Sound, and The Slightest Sign of Love, in which she experiments with harmonies of colour, from rich terracotta tones, to slate greys and acid yellows. Varying the widths and opacity of her stripes, her works mix dense oil colours and fluid inks on the same canvas. Sometimes, the lines appear to waver, at others, they appear straight and fluid, like drips of water.

Paultre is also a prolific writer, with numerous essays and poetry collections published in French, English, and German. Like her visual work, her writing often explores the interplay between colour, emotion, and human experience. Her book, Matter of Life, published by HENI in 2021, captures a diaristic account of her residency at Hirst’s studio.

Throughout her career, Paultre has exhibited her art internationally. In 2014, she held her first solo exhibition at the Musee Boesch in La Baule, Paris, and she has since exhibited her work at venues such as the Institut français in Bratislava, Gandy Gallery in Bratislava, and Erna Hecey Gallery in Luxembourg.

Paultre continues to live and work in Paris, exploring the emotional world of colour through her art and writing. Her pursuit is all-encompassing, her striped canvases at once presenting a crystallisation of her self, and its effacement: “Lines and lines - to resemble the repetition of the movement of simple elements. Lines, drawn over and over again, hundreds of times, with a trembling and steady hand, close to a river, to find a language, however simple - to test the endurance to live - for nothing - to disappear, to become."