André Brasilier is a famous French contemporary painter, who is best known for his poetic, elegant and colorful semiabstract painting. His unique artistic language combines simplicity with romance, while spans from abstract art to expressionism.

FLOATING LIKE A DREAM: BRASILIER'S ROMANTIC WORLD OF ART

Brasilier is a famous French contemporary painter, who is best known for his poetic, elegant and colorful semi-abstract painting. His unique artistic language combines simplicity with romance, while spans from abstract art to expressionism.

Brasilier was born in Saumur, west France in 1929. His childhood was filled by the beautiful sceneries of castles, estates and the countryside near the river of Loire, which contributed to his dream-like painting language later. Both his parents are painters, so Brasilier has been familiar with fine arts since his childhood. In 1949, he entered Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris at the age of 20, and after winning the Prix de Rome later at 23, he went to Villa Medici for further study. Since 1959, he has held many exhibitions at home and abroad, as well as having his personal review fairs, including at Château de Chenonceau, France (1980), Musée Picasso, Antibes, Côte d'Azur (1988), Hermitage Museum, Russia (2005) and the Museum Haus Ludwig, Germany (2007). Aside from painting, Brasilier is also renowned in illustrations, pottery and stage design.

Being fond of the natural beauty since childhood, Brasilier excels at capturing the voices, language and colors of nature. His works are lively records of the incomparable beauty of Mother Nature. With the epic, quiet, harmonic and elegant style, they praise the beauty of our nature. In terms of color choice, aside from his simple, direct approach, he also has a touch of fantasy and mystery. Brasilier prefers to add some pink touches to the blue sky as he considers such a dream-ish shade would express the beautiful moments of life perfectly. Brasilier's works are the endless quest towards beauty, which unveils the pre-existing, natural bliss around us.

Aside from nature, Brasilier's works always feature horses, music and women. When he was young, he used to live in an estate on the side of Loire, and naturally, the horses that galloped in the wilderness became one of his major themes. To Brasilier, horses represents divinity, they are Heaven's great creations that signifies strength, power and beauty. Music further inspires him, as the twirling melodies gave rise to his elegant, dynamic silhouettes as well as the unbound composition. As for women, his wife Chantal has been his muse for his entire life. Since the day he met her at Medici Garden on the side of the Tiber River in Rome, Chantal has become his perfect model of women, and has appeared everywhere in his works.

Brasilier does not pursue realism, he surpasses it. His works is a kind of spiritual adventure that intends to convey intangible emotions with paintings. Between figurative and abstract, Brasilier chose to utilize both, thus creating his unique“semi-abstract” expression, where he uses simplified shapes to replace the actual scene, and portray things in an equally schematic manner. Such a method seems to coincide with the stylized expression of East Asian paintings.

Sunset was completed in 1988. It combines the classic elements of Brasilier's works. With the semi-abstract expression, softened silhouettes and figure, using colors in large areas and the cutting-off composition, the influences of Japanese ukiyo-es can be clearly observed. The mysterious woman in the foreground has pale skin, black hair, wearing red clothes and inclining slightly, with her figure floating above the white sand trail. The horses beloved by the artists can be seen in the midground, where they roam along the greenery, and the trees combined the deep blue and fresh green, with the thin white lines expressing the windy rhymes. The red sunset on the background sinks slowly into the horizon, and while it is about to disappear in the bright pink and grey-blue horizon of fantasy, the peaceful countryside is bathed in the dimmed afterglow.

Considered as one of the very collect-worthy artists worldwide, Brasilier's works have been on the rise in the past years, with more and more of them being sold every year. His works are appreciated by collectors around Europe, America and Asian, and included in the collection of Yung Tu Museum of Art in Tainan, Taiwan and several private museums.