1979

After a decade in engineering and computer, then working as a planning consultant, I decided to invest in an activity that I was passionate about — one I could pursue for the rest of my life. I enrolled in a drawing class.

I began with portraiture—not out of fondness for the subject, but because it represented a genuine challenge. By facing difficulty, as Sri Aurobindo wrote, we evolve. This principle has guided my path.

 

1982

In Woodstock (NY), I discovered, with Albert Handell, the power of pastel on abrasive surfaces. Thanks to his advice on perceiving values, my visual sensitivity was transformed : I realized that vision itself can evolve. I left engineering to become a full-time painter.

 

1983

My engineering mindset persisted: I sought to understand mediums and to experiment. Alongside pastel and watercolor, I adopted tempera on traditional gesso and encaustic techniques.

 

1985-88

Four consecutive years participating in the annual exhibition of the Pastel Society of America in New York. I received three awards for my portraits.

 

1986.

In search of orientation within the gallery world, I delved into the writings of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, a major art dealer and defender of Picasso. I shared their opposition to abstraction and discovered that Cubism has been misunderstood.

I introduced still lifes into my repertoire, exploring certain Cubist ideas: flat and colorful architecture, contrapuntal structures (Juan Gris), and anything that could strengthen the painting as an autonomous object.

 

1986 to 1993

Three solo exhibitions in the same gallery.

 

1993

I encountered Wilhelm Worringer's Abstraction and Empathy. For him, abstraction was an instinctive response to a world perceived as threatening and the origin of the major artistic styles — Egyptian, Greek, Gothic. I discovered aesthetics as the science of form.

Worringer cracked the Cubists aesthetic edifice. Convinced that Kahnweiler had replied to Worringer, I found his responses but remained dissatisfied.

This research absorbed me entirely: I left my gallery, isolation deepened, and my readings multiplied.

 

2001.

A new exchange with my former gallerist. I refused his proposal. My research took center stage.

Meanwhile, I painted landscapes to recharge, discovering freedom in the rendering of textures. Often, once a painting was finished, I discovered elements — animals, figures — interwoven into the composition. Curiously, these forms had nothing to do with the subject I had intended to paint. It was as though my unconscious was seeking to manifest itself.

 

2004

I learned, three years after the fact, that the gallery had sold — without my consent — my last two unsold paintings, at auction in Toronto, where I had never exhibited. This act confronted me with the precariousness and fragility of artistic identity when subject to market decisions.

I wrote and rewrote an essay, attempting to clarify my thoughts. I still felt something important slipping through my fingers.

 

2012

I discovered Alois Riegl’s Spätrömische Kunstindustrie (1901), strongly recommended by Worringer. Thanks to a friend, I acquired the 1985 English edition published in Rome by a press specialized in Antiquity and Archaeology.

Riegl's essential idea — that unresolved difficulty carries within it the seeds of future evolution — resonates with my entire experience.

 

2014

The publication of a French translation of Riegl confirmed the importance of his ideas. My reflection focused on the origin of styles: to understand evolution — or stagnation —  of art one must is also to question how predecessors have been interpreted.

 

2025

Thirty years of exclusion from the gallery world and some recent administrative frictions testify to the precariousness of the artist’s profession. Yet, sustained by this will to understand, I continue: to explain how contemporary art, a faithful mirror of a society in crisis and transformation, has been shaped over time.

This is now my path.