Opera Gallery Paris is delighted to present an exhibition titled “Brasilier: 60 Years of Painting“, from March 20 to April 16, 2025.
André Brasilier was born in 1929, in the heart of the Loire Valley, a landscape that would become the quiet backdrop to much of his work. His paintings have an unmistakable air of refinement—elegant women, serene nudes, and distinguished men, all placed within a world that feels at once real and dreamlike.
Horses, though, were his first love. Growing up in Saumur, home to the famed Cadre Noir, he spent hours watching them move, their power and grace leaving an imprint that would follow him onto the canvas. “They have always been my muse, the spectacle of life, the essence of freedom,” he once said. In his paintings, they are symbols, moving with an almost weightless elegance, their presence both grounding and ethereal. His brushwork, fluid and expressive, captures them mid-motion, as if they might step beyond the canvas at any moment.
At 95, André Brasilier remains dedicated to his craft, painting every day in his studio within his Paris apartment in the 7th arrondissement. When I visited, he and his wife, Chantal, welcomed me warmly and showed me around. The walls were lined with fresh paintings, sketches, Japanese masks, and posters from past exhibitions, including his 2005 retrospective at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. With quiet pride, Brasilier noted that his works now hang alongside those of Buffet, Monet, and Renoir.
As we talked, the conversation drifted to Japan, a place that has long held a special significance for him. I told him how his work, with its fluid lines, and quiet elegance reminded me of Japanese ukiyo-e prints, and how easily I could see it finding a home there. He nodded.
He has been to Japan more than 25 times, always with Chantal. His work has been shown in Tokyo, Osaka, Sapporo, Fukuoka—first in 1992, then again in 2009, this time with Sendai and Nagoya added to the list. In 2006, they gave him full retrospectives in Tokyo and Nagoya, a rare honor. He speaks of it without fanfare, but there’s a quiet pride in the way he recalls it.
It’s easy to place him in the same vein as painters like Jean-Pierre Cassigneul—a fair comparison, though Brasilier’s world might appear softer, and imbued with nature, music, and poetry.
What would Brasilier’s paintings be without mention of his beloved wife and muse, Chantal? She appears in so many of them—sometimes thoughtful, sometimes joyful, seated on a bench or simply drifting through fields of flowers.
Over the decades, Brasilier’s paintings have been exhibited worldwide, earning him recognition as one of the most poetic and enduring artists of his generation. His works continue to captivate art lovers, offering a peaceful escape into a luminous world of color and imagination.
プロテオドラ Theodora Poulot 