Denis Frémond's pictorial phantasmagorias.

The old sea III

Denis Frémond is a French artist born in Le Havre in 1950. After graduating from the Ecole Boulle, he did a whole range of surprising jobs, such as bugler on the helicopter carrier Jeanne d’Arc. Since the late 70s, Denis has been painting interiors of all kinds, particularly sumptuous New York apartments. His unique style may appear simple with its clean lines, but it’s all about composition, perspective and, above all, light, whether natural or artificial. He has permanent exhibitions at Galerie Ariel Jacob in Paris and Galerie Vue sur mer in Dinard. He also exhibits in New York, London, Madrid etc…

The painter from Le Havre invites us to lose ourselves in imaginary, dreamlike places, filled with serene solitude and the immensity of dreams. Magnificent canvases that reinvent a very Art Deco ideal.

Light III

Between day and night, nature and architecture, Denis Frémond‘s paintings are enigmatic. With his remarkable use of perspective, the artist gives rhythm to his canvas with geometric shapes, alternating segments and curves. His landscapes are adorned with colors that are at once vibrant and cool, in a twilight atmosphere, a cameo of blues ranging from pink to green.

Juan-les-Pins

It’s a painting imbued with mystery, where the human figure is more suggested than represented, an almost ghostly presence. The viewer passes through the canvas without inhabiting it, a poetic representation of life…

Fantasy in the style of Maurice Ravel

“A dreamy atmosphere for an exceptional era: thanks be to Denis Frémond, who didn’t experience this period “in person”, for so masterfully painting the art deco atmosphere, its representation in furniture, details, objects and buildings where Le Corbusier reigned. A fine reference for this painter from Le Havre, who associates the 1925 sites with a particular time of day, a specific season, autumn or winter, with its elongated shadows and the superb, warm illumination of an often declining but ever-present sun, where the rounded, comfortable furniture of the Roaring Twenties is set in elegant, serene architecture”.

André Ruellan, art critic

The Burial of Saint John Perse

The book of my sea

“George Gershwin’s melodies and Maurice Dekobra’s novels are at the rendezvous of these privileged moments suggested by Denis Frémond, with a pure technique, a smooth material from which emerges in generous colors the nostalgia and the spell of a fascinating era that lives again soberly, simply but with a magical and desirable efficiency”.

André Ruellan, art critic

The Little Prince

Larghetto I

The works of Denis Frémond seem destined to never resemble each other, like an endless quest for new styles and new places. Initially a press cartoonist and author of comic strips for Pilote, Charlie Mensuel, L’Écho des savanes, Dargaud and Les Humanoïdes associés, the 71-year-old native of Le Havre has never stopped returning to his first passion: painting.

On the palace steps

Shadow and light III

For over thirty years, this eclectic artist has been inviting us into his worlds of retro, early 20th-century aesthetics, conjuring up a musical, artistic and literary atmosphere of Edward Hopper, George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, Cole Porter, Rainer Maria Rilke and Saint-John Perse. A seaside villa, a New York penthouse, a Parisian brasserie… these cinematic settings are like “ideal representations of contemplation”, imbued with a permanent mystery and nostalgia for times gone by.

Pink clouds

Road

In the heart of dreams
Interior and exterior spaces are thus made up of long perspectives that melt into intense blues, greens and browns. Between sunrises and sunsets, the artist plays with depth, textures, blurs and reflections, from which emerge immaculate beaches, majestic terraces and pools, skyscrapers lost on the horizon.

Light 3

Light 2

At the heart of these spaces is the same solitary figure in a white shirt, going about his meditative business.

Beach 1

Beach 2

Behind the evocative titles of the series are often stories, lulled by the sound of waves, turning book pages or piano notes. In the same way, certain canvases are repeated over and over like variants of recurring dreams, revealing a palette of colors and a diffuse light whose rays caress the art deco-style furniture and architecture.