Marcel Chevalier (1941-2005)
Title: Self-Portrait
Year: 2002
Medium: Painting on paper
Dimensions: 32 × 27 cm (12 ½ × 10 ½ in)
Signature: Signed and titled on the back

In this 2002 self-portrait, Marcel Chevalier delivers a work that is both introspective and vigorous. The face, barely emerging from an interlacing of grey and white strokes, seems to surface from a field of matter in perpetual motion. The painted surface, built up through layers and scumbles, reveals flashes of pink and blue that lighten the dominant austerity and lend the portrait an almost spectral vibration.

This is not a simple exercise in likeness, but a true confrontation with the self: the artist scrutinizes his own features to probe their unease, fragility, and inner strength. The gestural, at times brutal brushwork contrasts with the restrained palette, creating a dramatic tension that runs through the entire surface of the paper. Far from idealization, this self-portrait becomes a mirror of the soul, where doubt, lucidity, and self-assertion converge.

Biographical Note

Marcel Chevalier is a French artist born in 1941. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, he established himself in the 1960s as a distinctive figure on the contemporary art scene, developing a body of work oscillating between figuration and abstraction. Based in Normandy, he has continually approached painting as a field of inquiry and exploration, building an oeuvre deeply marked by memory, time, and introspection.

His canvases and works on paper testify to his attachment to pictorial matter, explored in all its density and transparency. While he has long focused on the human figure, particularly through series of portraits and self-portraits, Chevalier has also devoted a large part of his production to landscapes, often suffused with uncertain, shimmering light.

Exhibited regularly in France and abroad, his works are represented in several public and private collections. His art, positioned between expressionism and lyrical abstraction, remains an obstinate quest for pictorial truth, always suspended between presence and disappearance.