vilcollet | The Genealogy of Style

View of a Skull, Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1489

Saint Francis in Meditation, Caravaggio, 1605

Skull, Albrecht Dürer, 1521

La Calavera Catrina (Dapper Skeleton or Elegant Skull), José Guadalupe Posada, 1910-1913.

Much memento mori art is associated with the Mexican festival Day of the Dead, including skull-shaped candies and bread loaves adorned with bread “bones.”

Self-portrait With Death Playing the Fiddle, Arnold Böcklin, 1872

Engraving by M.C. Escher, 1919

Untitled-Death Outside the Head-Paul Eluard, Salvador Dalí, 1933

Head with Broken Pot, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1942

Sin esperanza (Without Hope), Frida Kahlo, 1945

Detail of Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central, Diego Rivera, 1946-1947

Three Study Portraits of Lucian Freud, by Francis Bacon

Artwork by Sergio Toppi

Drawings by Edward Gorey

Knowledge of the Past Is the Key to the Future: Some Afterthoughts on Discovery, Robert Colescott, 1986

Riding with Death, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1988

Black Kites, Gabriel Orozco, 1997

For the Love of God, Damien Hirst, 1997

The Orientalist, Walton Ford, 1999

Painting by Pascal Vilcollet

Confetti Death, Typoe, 2010

Born in Paris, 1979, Pascal Vilcollet studied graphic design and taught himself to paint at age 16. “Fortunately, there was not much to do in my suburb. I discovered very early, museum galleries; it is there that I knew I would be painting later”.

He paints mostly for his own satisfaction. Portrait is his favorite motif, “it can be my obsession”. He doesn’t look for creating an effect; he said he paints to lighten a weight. He’s not interested in realism, pure figuration or hyper realism, rather than the border between reality and abstraction.

Vilcollet claims to have very eclectic tastes. He appreciates enormously Pierre Soulage and respects the artists that, in his opinion, represented their era: Caravaggio, Diego Velázquez, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko or contemporaries like Lucien Freud, Murakami, Justin Mortimer or Jenny Saville.

He spoke about his icons, mostly characters he feels fascination for because he either admires them. Taking advantage of real graphic representations, he fragments them and then reconstructs them, giving us a new insight into a psychological portrait. Pascal Vilcollet’s brush is the dynamic extension of his body while he is in action.